l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Thomas Lifson
The Reuters news service once again has made itself a laughingstock by
publishing a mistake-riddled hit piece on Marco Rubio, all but ruling him
out as a vice presidential nominee for the GOP because of alleged financial
problems. Many of which turned out to be untrue. Five corrections were
necessary.
Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller outlines a total of 7 falsehoods or
exaggerations in the story. Dylan Byers of Politico spoke to Reuters staff
who refused to go on the record (an interesting stance for a newsman), and
writes:
One senior staffer at Reuters described the episode to me as a "fiasco,"
another as a "disgrace."
It was so bad, in fact, that the editors and writer involved have been
asked not to talk about it. (I reached out to editors David Lindsey and Eric
Walsh, but have not heard back.)
They won't even defend themselves! How bad must it be if you can't even
fabricate a rationalization of the facts. The facts must themselves be
damning. John Hinderake of Powerline calls it the "worst news story of 2012."
There are two hypotheses for what happened at Reuters:
1. An incompetent reporter did a half-assed job of research, and his
editors (who either assigned or approved the story to the reporter in the
first place) didn't bother with fact-checking. Or
2. They were fed flawed oppo research. Which raises the obvious question of
who would want to knock Rubio out of consideration.
Let's examine each.
1. Incompetence
Reuters claims:
Our policy is to send news to our customers only after scrutiny by a
group of production editors who ensure quality standards are maintained
across all our news services.
These same purported quality standards were in place in 2006, when Reuters
was busted for distributing an obviously photoshopped photograph
exaggerating the destruction in an Israel air raid on Beirut. The very same
photo that was the basis for the photoshopping had already been distributed
by Reuters! This was quickly demonstrated in the blogosphere, as were
anomalies that showed the photoshopping wasn't even very skilful.
When sufficiently embarrassed, the agency withdrew the photo, but retained
the services of the Arab photographer who had supplied the crude forgery.
But critics quickly noted many other questionable photos in his work already
distributed by Reuters, and then the agency finally, after being humiliated
worldwide over distributing phony Hezb'allah propaganda over an extended
period, withdrew all the work of Adnan Hajj.
The agency has long slanted its Middle East reporting, and allegations of
indiscriminate Israeli bombing of Beirut (from which missiles were being
launched against Israel) were the cardinal propaganda theme of Hezb'allah.
Israel made every effort to pinpoint its attacks on buildings from which
missiles had been launched, and in order to reinforce its talking point, Hez
made sure to launch missiles from crowded residential areas. So the
difference between a picture showing one building with smoke billowing out,
and showing a bunch of smoke form a bunch of buildings was pretty
fundamental in terms of the framing of the story.
In other words, the photo editors who supposedly enforce Reuters' quality
standards were doing no such thing. They approved (if they even looked at) a
crude and obvious forgery that served the propaganda aims of Hezb'allah.
As I wrote at the time, "There can be no denying by Reuters that its
organization is deeply flawed in terms of its ability to enforce elementary
quality standards. And any client of Reuters which continues to accept
photographic material from it is on notice that the organization is unable
to stand behind the integrity of its photojournalism, and that it does not
plan to do anything about the organizational failure to which it has
admitted."
But the rot went even deeper. A year later, the UK Guardian reported:
News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released
last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the
North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.
The images were reproduced around the world - including by the Guardian
and Guardian Unlimited - alongside the story of Russia planting its flag
below the North Pole on Thursday last week.
But it has now emerged that the footage actually showed two Finnish-made
Mir submersibles that were employed on location filming at the scene of the
wreck of the RMS Titanic ship in the north Atlantic some 10 years ago.
This footage was used in sequences in James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster
about the 1912 disaster.
At a minimum, it would appear that Reuters has not improved its quality
standards in the years since then. So incompetence cannot be ruled out. Nor
can a willingness to serve as a propaganda vehicle for one side in a
political dispute. Which raises the second hypothesis:
2. They were fed oppo research
One of many dirty little secrets of modern journalism is that reporters
often function as transcribers of information - press releases of one sort
or another, in other words -- supplied to them by interested parties. It may
be as politically innocent as a plug for a new product, but when politics
is at work, opposition research is often supplied to reporters. Nearly
always, this involves hits on Republicans.
There is a certain resemblance of this process to the way a lot of
legislation is based on material written by lobbyists. In both cases, a lot
of time and effort is saved on the part of the person being paid to do the
job, and in both cases, important mutually beneficial relationships are
sustained. Everybody wins! (Except the public.)
If they were fed opposition research, from whom did it come? Rubio's
electoral appeal is considerable, and adding him to the ticket could
influence many voters, not just Hispanics, to look upon the GOP ticket as
attractive. In other words, applying the test of Cui bono, David Axelrod's
re-election shop in Chicago would be the likeliest source. Does anyone
imagine that Axelrod would be above such a move? More troubling is the
question of whether their quality standards are as low as Reuters. If the
Obama campaign is behind this, then we know that David Axelrod is slipping
and the re-election effort is in trouble.
If hypothesis one is true, and they came up with the idea themselves, then
self-interest would dictate a review of the reporter's work and that of the
editors who allegedly enforced quality standards, followed by a notice to
customers of the steps which have been taken to assure no further errors.
This is what manufacturers usually do when they discover a defective product
has been shipped. Otherwise, customers doubt the reliability of the
products, and find other sources of supply.
That would seem to argue for hypothesis two. Sometimes silence is eloquent.
On the other hand, we are dealing with a bunch of people stupid enough to
release a still from the most popular movie of our era and claim it as a
news photo.
Either way, Paul Julius Reuter, the German rabbi's son who founded the
Reuters News Agency a century and a half ago, still is spinning in his grave.
Thomas Lifson is editor and publisher of American Thinker | S*********n
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【在 l****z 的大作中提到】
: By Thomas Lifson
: The Reuters news service once again has made itself a laughingstock by
: publishing a mistake-riddled hit piece on Marco Rubio, all but ruling him
: out as a vice presidential nominee for the GOP because of alleged financial
: problems. Many of which turned out to be untrue. Five corrections were
: necessary.
: Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller outlines a total of 7 falsehoods or
: exaggerations in the story. Dylan Byers of Politico spoke to Reuters staff
: who refused to go on the record (an interesting stance for a newsman), and
: writes:
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