I like this one:

http://blogs.reuters.com/gbu/2008/08/04/a-story-in…

I suggest if you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about when it comes to journalism, it’d be an idea to ask a *question* about the story, not make stupid accusations.

To be fair, some of the mistakes mentioned in the blog are awful. But good on Reuters for making such corrections public and transparent - it means I trust them more than any other news source now.

They’re so reliable they reported the Solomon building in New York had collapsed half-an-hour before it actually did. But I suppose they can only report what they’re told.

BBC World did that too. Leading to so many ridiculous conspiracy theories it’s not even funny.

A bad mistake, and not one that should have happened, but in the confusion it’s understandable.

The BBC’s response with 5 years of hindsight; http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/03/part…

Sounds like every news source was confused at that point, and perhaps understandably…

Sssshhhhh, you’ll get the nutters on here.

Anyway, this is a good blog:

http://www.regrettheerror.com/

> Sssshhhhh, you’ll get the nutters on here.

Well, we already have performingmonkey…

I am an inside job.

There’s an ugly side to this which is the growth of a conspiracist mindset in the general public. A lot of people now carp on about the “liberal media” or “politically correct media” or “corporate media” or any other term to suggest that news outlets which have to stand up to scrutiny and answer to mistakes can’t be trusted. And where are we supposed to look for the “truth”? Usually blogs or websites, often written by cranks who are giving us the “facts” that the “mainstream/corporate/liberal” media can’t/won’t publish”. It’s a sickness of the modern world that getting your information from a long-established, regulated source like the BBC can lead to accusations of being a shill but believing any old crap on some tinfoil hatter’s blog that can refuse to answer to checks or balances on its “facts” is a supposed sign of suss.

As John says, the fact that Reuters allow people to challenge their reportage and explain either why they’re right or apologise when they’re wrong is a Very Good Thing indeed. Cock-up is far more likely that conspiracy and a forum where the origins of the cock-up can be explained and the truth can be allowed to emerge is likely to improve public confidence in the mainstream media and hopefully draw people away from the shrill scaremongering of the cranks and the tinfoil hatters.

> It’s a sickness of the modern world that getting your information from a long-established, regulated source like the BBC can lead to accusations of being a shill but believing any old crap on some tinfoil hatter’s blog that can refuse to answer to checks or balances on its “facts” is a supposed sign of suss.

But it’s extremely dangerous IMO that so many people (millions more than the numbers that read ‘tinfoil hatter’ sites) take BBC News, or any national news broadcaster for that matter - particularly the Murdoch/News Corp agenda-fueled Sky news - as gospel. Conspiracy theorists are no threat to anyone, they have no power, no voice, despite deluding themselves into thinking they have. Media groups hold the world in their grip, and lizard humanoids from 500,000 years into our future own them.

Nobody takes BBC News (let alone Sky) as “gospel”; it’s trusted because it’s regulated and has to answer for it if it misrepresents, mis-reports or pursues an agenda (as an example, look at the investigation into it’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian situation which is actually generally very good but which still provoked an internal audit). One of the reasons the BBC is largely trustworthy is that, like Reuters, it admits its mistakes and is open to criticism.

And consipracy theorists *do* have power because they tap into people’s prejudices and spread distortion or outright lies. Take a look at “snopes.com” and have a look at all the bullshit round robin emails demanding boycotts of this or that company or making false claims about this or that politician. This sort of thing spreads - have you seen how many people in the UK aren’t convinced by the scientific concensus about Global Warming? Why is that do you think that is given that conspiracism about the “real reasons” behind the concensus about global warming is absolutely rife? On a more serious level, Nazism (the consequences of which I shouldn’t need to tell you) was built on a foundation of conspiracist thinking and pseudoscientific claptrap.

> have you seen how many people in the UK aren’t convinced by the scientific concensus about Global Warming?

That’s probably because 99% of people in the UK couldn’t give a fuck about the scientific concensus of anything! Yes, global warming is scientific fact, it’s happening, it’s on the increase and we better get fucking used to it because it’ll still be happening in hundreds of years time regardless of what anyone on this planet does about it. What a lot of people (who give a shit) won’t buy is the idea that we can actually do anything effective to combat it’s natural progression. Not enough is set in stone with regards to just how much the human race is adding to global warming.

Instilling a bit of fear into the western world over the whole issue is yet another neat little thing that governments can use to fool the public into thinking they care about and are tackling issues that directly affect us all on a huge scale (‘we have to do this to secure the future of our children and our children’s children.OK, we’ll try and stop London flooding, however, due to us not being able to deal with crime and us wanting everyone to drink themselves into oblivion to make up for the tax we’re losing on people quitting smoking, it will become a fucking cesspit.’)

The thing is, it would probably take a hundred years and more for any significant difference to be made by western governments in any battle against global warming. People aren’t convinced because there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Hardly anyone has any idea what the tunnel is even! What people DO see is money and how every penny that goes towards ‘saving the planet’ by combating climate change seems like a waste.

> On a more serious level, Nazism (the consequences of which I shouldn’t need to tell you)

You mean various future western administrations adopting many of their policies and tactics?

Sorry, but I don’t think there’s very much point in continuing to debate this with you. Feel free to think you’ve won.

Actually, I apologise for sounding rather snotty (I’m jetlagged and moody because I’m not going to get any sleep for another three hours or so). What I mean is that we’re clearly looking at this from very different mindsets. I’m someone who used to be very open to conspiracism and “alternative” ideas and who has strongly turned against it, you seem not only open to them but actively sympathetic. Thus any further debate on the subject it simply not going to go anywhere in a creationist/darwinist stylee and so would be a bit pointless.

I’m not that sympathetic to conspiracy theorists, I just don’t like it when people are so set against considering anything that isn’t in front of their face. I liken it to when someone thinks they know everything about cars when in fact they’ve never even lifted their own hood.

TEH CONSPIRACIEIESIESIES!!!!11111

> I liken it to when someone thinks they know everything about cars when in fact they’ve never even lifted their own hood.

This raises an important point about the current anti-vaccination movement, which has elements in common with conspiracy theorists, such as the message that you shouldn’t trust what governments tell you. Of course you shouldn’t take everything at face value, but if you ARE going to start questioning things, you need a bit of knowledge to do so. From what I’ve seen, a lot of ‘questioning’ of official government advice or statements by conspiracy theorists is based on deliberately skewed or just plain wrong information. In the case of the anti-vaccination movement, actual lives have been put at risk for no reason at all, which makes me pretty angry, and takes me back to the original reason for posting the story above.

Another example of reader stupidity… http://blogs.reuters.com/gbu/2008/08/08/political-…