Comments on: Stylish correction from the Observer readers’ editor

By: kw112233

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By: diudiu

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By: fiwallace

fiwallace — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:24:42 +0000

Is it too much to hope that the resignation of the Observer’s editor might be linked to any of this?

Oh – he’s being lauded for his extraordinary contribution to journalism.

Probably not, then.

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:57:41 +0000

I thought it might be interesting to investigate people with the same name as me a bit more, but then I realised that if Dave Gorman can only make it quite interesting, what chance have I got!

By: Diotima

Diotima — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:32:09 +0000

Martin,
I am from East Cork (county not city) and once, googling my name, (unusual Irish name as it happens) I found that I was a black rap singer and a Professor of Medicine at TCD.

By: Diotima

Diotima — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:17:59 +0000

Ambrielle is quite right. The Obsever, faced with falling sales, is trying to reposition itself as a kind of centre-left Daily Mail, if you will forgive the oxymoron. The Guardian and Observer both follow the Mail’s lead with certain stories, but always add a centre-left frame. I read the Mail online—one might as well know what they think.

By: Diotima

Diotima — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:55:38 +0000

When I read a science or medicine article in either the Guardian or the Observer, I always check to see whether it has been written by a ‘home affairs correspondent’ or ‘social affairs correspondent’;. Typically when a dubious or ludicrous piece on matters broadly scientific is printed, it flies under such a flag of convenience.

By: shoshin

shoshin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:27:22 +0000

Unfortunately because newspapers are usually internationally owned, this piece of rubbish ran as far away as New Zealand, where I live. And we don’t get to see the retraction that was posted in the orginal paper. As a former journalist who bailed for many of the reasons cited above, I know it is all too easy for these stories to get through. Most journos have no science backgrounds or understanding of scientific method. Most junior journos here tend to be young women in their 20s who have finished a bachelor of anything at all, realised they can’t get a job so they do a post-grad journalism diploma. For example, in one news conference the news editor asked us if gifted children were “fast” or “slow”. The main driver in a newsroom is to get a front page story or as close to the front page as possible. Fact checking? That’s a joke as newsrooms are so understaffed reporters are covering several rounds. I now work in communications for a research organisation and make sure I provide all the references, sources and contacts so I can get a reasonable amount of accuracy in the story. Nonetheless, when a major reserach paper was released by one of our scientists, Reuters completely misunderstood it and unfortunately that was the story that ran worldwide!

By: Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:12:52 +0000

umm hi IrritatedInsider.

i guess i’m not going to delete your comment, because that would be melodramatic, but i’m not going to write about it either. i know it sounds spectacularly sanctimonious but i don’t really do gossip.

By: pv

pv — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:37:28 +0000

emilypk, maybe what Stephen Pritchard is really saying is that they at the Observer aren’t very good with this Interwebby thingy – but then neither is anyone else, so no-one should be too hard on them. Something daft like that, anway.

By: RS

RS — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:05:35 +0000

Previous discussion of Observer staff and MMR attitudes:

www.badscience.net/?p=458#comment-14795

By: emilypk

emilypk — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:30:53 +0000

Holy rampamt literalism, Batman. I also give journalist credit as being able to choose another noun if the name is a common one–I did say “almost every time” after all. Seriously, I think that is checking facts online is a part oof the job they should master the Google Fu well enough to check “Krugel” online and not have him come up smelling of roses. In fact I don’t know what keywords you could have used even a few months agop that wouldn’t have raised a red flag. That was my point, next time I will be careful not to make it by representative example.

By: buffalo66

buffalo66 — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:05:29 +0000

seems to be back again. maybe it really was just a temporary fault.

By: trickcyclist

trickcyclist — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:22:26 +0000

How mysterious… The Observer article about MMR posted by Gimpy above (observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,647859,00.html) appears to have disappeared! Now why would that happen?

By: Acleron

Acleron — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:15:41 +0000

Although everyone makes mistakes, striving for perfection should be the target. At the moment, the target appears to be much lower.

This from Science (of) Journalism
“though it does seem that writing skills are more values than science skills when recruiting science journalism, at least according to this article). Well, or at least people did not seem to think that being a humanities graduate makes you a worse science journalist.(sic)”

If this is an example of their writing skills, it is not surprising their science skills are so poor. And is it that becoming a humanities graduate reduces your science writing skills or that humanities graduates are just as good as science graduates.

Another quote “In short, most journalists view their job as producing news, not public information.” Shouldn’t that be “reporting news” or is this particular writer admitting what I have long thought, they prefer to make the news.

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 02:43:56 +0000

Emilypk, I’ve just googled my name + scam and come across some remarkable facts (I’ve never googled myself before).

I was born in Limerick and have had an eventful life. I’ve been a poet, sailor, sound recordist, actor and producer. I’ve become a District Attorney and been an Air Force Colonel. I own my own funeral home and died due to being given the wrong blood type (handy, owning my own funeral home, I suppose).

However, as none of the above is true, I think journalists will need to do more than just that.

By: emilypk

emilypk — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:43:39 +0000

It does rather suggest newspapers are mainly for salacious entertainment, and blogs for critical analysis and vetted information.

Which is rather amusing.

By: quietstorm

quietstorm — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:52:26 +0000

Going back to the frightening ‘Doctor of Journalism’ blog….

“In short, most journalists view their job as producing news, not public information.”

Would someone, preferably someone of a humanities bent, please describe to me in detail (although bearing in mind that I can cope with words of more than one syllable!) the distinction between “news” and “public information”.

I had thought, naively, that these were one and the same thing. After reading some of these blogs I am in danger of equating:

“news” = entertaining, but it doesn’t really matter if it’s fictional or not

“public information” = non-fiction, checked information.

As a newspaper-reading punter, I had (naively, again) thought that most journalists were at least trying to provide us with the latter. If it’s so difficult to produce stories within deadlines then employ more people. Most scientists are quite badly paid already, so newspaper owners wouldn’t break the bank by tempting a few over to science reporting.

By: emilypk

emilypk — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:39:24 +0000

I am, of course, assuming the journos can read as well as count.

By: Robert Carnegie

Robert Carnegie — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:42:36 +0000

There are 552 Google results for my name + “scam” and I haven’t tried to sell -anything-. To be fair, it doesn’t say that I have – except when my name is randomly stolen to sell diet pills, for which I am not really a good advertisement.