Cost-Benefit Analysis for Journalists and Fact Checking

I’ve read so many rebuttals of journalists which say things like “<journalist> did not take the effort to speak with experts/check their facts/verify the evidence…. in the future they should…”

I’m pretty sure the guilty journalists in these cases *usually* know this, they just don’t care.

I can imagine a journalist being on top of a great story, a story full of controversy, of revelation and exposé…. and the last thing they want to happen is tofind some inconvenient bloody fact which undermines the whole damn story!

If that happened they would have to start all over again on a completely new story which will definitely be far less exciting and interesting. It is much easier, and far more rewarding to publish the (potentially inaccurate) scoop that they have and get crap loads of exciting traffic and create a buzz and a hive of activity and “conversation”, than it is to ‘go speak to the experts’.

This doesn’t seem like a good system for the consumers.

I haven’t thought of a solution to fixing it yet. Anyone got any ideas?

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One Reply to “Cost-Benefit Analysis for Journalists and Fact Checking”

  1. Journalists are also paid by the word, so fact checking reduces their hourly rate.

    Solution: Onus on the paper to fact check them, or organisation in the middle (crowd-sourced?) who fact checks.

    P

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