New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan‘s critique (4/24/14) of her paper’s handling of their Russia/Ukraine photo scoop closed with this:
The Times‘ influence demands that it be cautious, especially when deciding to publish what amounts to a government handout.
The thing about the news business is that what appears in the New York Times reappears lots of other places. The Times piece, “Photos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Russia,” was posted on Sunday night (4/20/14) and appeared on the paper’s front page the next day. So it was no surprise that it would wind up on one on the network newscasts. The NBC Nightly News, to be precise.
“There are new images just now released from Ukraine that are being called substantial photographic proof that Russian military forces have crossed over the border and are causing trouble,” NBC anchor Brian Williams (4/21/14) told viewers.
Correspondent Andrea Mitchell cleared it up:
If they walk like Russian soldiers, dress like Russian soldiers, and even talk like Russian soldiers–most likely they are Russian soldiers…. Picture after picture given to European monitors and the US by the Kiev government showing that the well-trained uniformed but often masked men are, as suspected, Russian troops.
Mitchell all but declares that the photographs establish that the allegations are now facts: “Those armed men who’ve been now identified as Russian soldiers, they are still holding government buildings in cities across eastern Ukraine.”
The Times decided to walk back its story once there was skepticism about the photos they had been supplied (FAIR Blog, 4/23/14). Will NBC do the same thing for its viewers?
NBC News‘ Twitter feed: @NBCNews
Since the corpress uncritically accepts whatever the gummint feeds them
You can call this another instance of spreading the gospel.
Isn’t this what also happened with the Syrian misinformation campaign churned out by the corporate media?
The subject for this piece as it appeared in my inbox made no sense. What story got walked back? I assumed it was something about Ukraine (what story isn’t about Ukraine these days?), but your mails and stories REALLY need some serious proofreading.
I respect you all as journalists, honestly; I also appreciate the fact you do this for practically nothing. But I worry that a simple lack of checking your work before hitting “POST” or “SEND” could ruin it for you by people who may not want to muddle through one more piece written as if the audience didn’t matter.
It’s just a matter of competition. Out of all the items that end up in my inbox to be read, I will read those items that are well-written first. Only if there is time will I go back and read other pieces that may require me to re-parse sentences, self-correct misspellings, interpolate missing bits of information, etc. Good chance I might miss (otherwise) hard work for lack of a quick review before publication.
I tell every organization this.
Very badly written.Not even sure what your point is.I suppose your point is that there is not absolute proof that the soldiers shown are Russian.Ok…..