OT - but related to periodic BY commentary

[KnightBridgeAZ]

On and off I note comments on the BY about sloppy and / or poor reporting by media. I have a golden example.

The weekly athletic newsletter at Arizona (Wildcat Wednesday) reported that season ticket renewals were available on-line for football and next year's men's basketball season. It also announced that the men's renewal would include a one-time, non-optional $200 surcharge (in addition to any seat license fees) to be used on the upcoming phase one of renovation at the McKale Center. Very clearly stated.

The local paper reported today - in 2 articles, no less - that both football and men's basketball renewals would include the surcharge, referencing Wildcat Wednesday as the source. Since that makes little sense (football is not played in McKale) one would think that the writer / editor would feel the need to double check the story. But no. Very poor, in my opinion.

 

[tomcat]

Not unusual, IMHO. What often happens is the person who is assigned to write such things may not have any subject-matter knowledge and simply puts together the story her or she thinks is right, without checking. Working up the road in the Phoenix market, I had occasion to talk to a reporter from a local TV station. The story she ran on-air was actually reasonably accurate. However, she passed "details" of the story to the station's online "editor," who managed to thoroughly misquote me, including one sentence that was the exact opposite of what I told the reporter. It took a long and emotional call to the station to set matters straight, and eventually the online story was changed to be at least not inaccurate. But these days, you can often forget matters of context and subtlety. You are lucky if they don't get it completely wrong. As always, newspapers are often better than broadcast, but as the media implodes around us, things are only going to get worse.

(Truth in reporting: I was a newspaper reporter for 11 years and on broadcast for 8 more. For much of the rest of my working life, I've dealt with the media as a spokesperson for various organizations.)

 

[UcMiami]

Agree - the level of care taken in all forms of media is getting worse as is the breadth of knowledge of many of those working in the media. 40 years ago the NY Times would get buckets of mail if they had a misspelling in one of their stories - now you just hope the main facts are correct.
My favorite mistake was a Sunday Magazine story they did on the mob and they had a picture of one of the crime family's homes in NJ I think. The next week's magazine had a large apology for publishing a picture of the wrong house - they had chosen a picture of some poor slob's house by mistake, and I just imagined the shock on that guy's face as he was sitting over his morning coffee when he saw the picture, and the non-stop phone calls from friends and family for the next week. (He did however have smooth sailing with the loan application he had pending, and seemed to get treated better whenever he ate out for the next few months! And he was much more successful in his weekly pocket game - every bluff he made was never called!)

 

[watanabe]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/14/spike-lee-zimmerman-address-tweet_n_4273133.html

Remember this famous misdirect?