|
 |
 |
|
|
|
| Author |
Message |
    
Brian W. Schoeneman
Inspector
Username: Deltaxi65
Post Number: 237
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 12, 2003 - 9:52 am: | 
|
All,
I don't know if all of you have been following the New York Times case against their former reporter Jayson Blair, but I'll summarize it here quickly:
This 27 year old reporter wrote nearly 600 articles or the New York Times, and it appears that for the majority of them, he lied about where he was, made up facts and quotes, made up sources, stole reports from other papers, and generally made major errors.
These errors included significant stories that I recall reading and being angered over, particularly about the Washington Sniper case and the FBI investigation - apparently the idea that the Feds and the White House pulled John Muhammed out of the local interrogation right before he wanted to confess was a piece of BS that Blair pulled out of his ass.
How this could happen at the international "newspaper of record", with the largest readership in the world, and the most aggresive fact checkers around astounds me.
What this makes me think about, in relation to the Ripper case, is if this could happen today - it could have happened in 1888 too.
With all of the local papers "flooding the zone" (to use Times' Executive Editor Howell Raines' phrase), with none of them having direct access to the crime scene, the high level police investigators or even the bodies, mistakes must have gotten made. We know from comparing the police files with the press reports that many of them are wrong.
So what lesson can we learn?
When we do our research we cannot accept press reports at face value. We must challenge them, and only credit their veracity when they are confirmed by another, non-press report.
If a 27 year old can fool the most prestigious paper in the world for 4 years, who knows what a less-than-honest newspaperman could have done for his penny sheet during the Ripper murders.
B
|
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 213
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 12, 2003 - 1:22 pm: |
|
Very good point Brian.
I can also throw in the fact that I used to work for the most popular international news journal in the world, and it was an accepted matter of form when writing a story to throw in all manner of rubbish and to claim that it came from 'sources that could not be named or disclosed', such as 'a high source in the Pentagon has confirmed...'. One story I worked on concerning the Iraq-Iran war had 30 such unsourced quotes - all lies in other words - by the time it reached my desk and I threw it in the bin, and was sacked.
Best day of my life. |
Brian W. Schoeneman
Inspector
Username: Deltaxi65
Post Number: 238
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 12, 2003 - 3:44 pm: |
|
AP,
You worked for Playboy?
B |
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 216
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 12, 2003 - 3:51 pm: |
|
Brian
As it happens, yes.
But it were but brief love affair.
Hugh's socks were far too smelly and even a stretch limo could not disguise the fact.
|
Brian W. Schoeneman
Inspector
Username: Deltaxi65
Post Number: 239
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 12, 2003 - 4:02 pm: |
|
AP,
I was a "campus rep" in the marketing program when I was in college. Got a Nintendo and a photo with a playmate out of it. 
B |
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 217
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 12, 2003 - 5:54 pm: |
|
Well Brian,
I fared a little better.
Got a BMW series 3 - nice car in silver fox - a ranch in Chile and a swimming pool in Marbella.
But hey, I had an advantage.
That of playmate. |
Brian W. Schoeneman
Inspector
Username: Deltaxi65
Post Number: 240
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 12, 2003 - 9:53 pm: |
|
AP,
It helps being a girl.
B |
Jeffrey Bloomfied
Sergeant
Username: Mayerling
Post Number: 45
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 12, 2003 - 10:24 pm: |
|
Actually it has happened plenty of times. In
the Lizzie Borden case, a newspaperman with the
ironically apt name of Harry Trickey (of the
Boston Globe) hoaxed his newspaper with an
article. Mr. Trickey's honesty regarding his
similar reporting of the case of Dr. T. Thatcher
Graves for the poisoning of Mrs. Barnaby has
been questioned by Barnaby Conrad a few years ago.
Jeff |
John Ruffels
Sergeant
Username: Johnr
Post Number: 39
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2003 - 5:11 am: |
|
Hello chaps,
Wow! Sounds like a non-Lou-Reed "New York conversation" goin' on here.
I am sure you are both aware reporters at the 1888
PALL MALL GAZETTE working for W.T.Stead, sat around inventing JTR scoops and filching from other London papers?
That particular paper, as you may also be aware, was certainly the most prolific of chroniclers of Jack's exploits.
How do you think Donald McCormick became such a
chronic er, chronicler? Press clippings.....
Love the way you jump in and keep 'em honest Brian
Keep it up! Hello A.P. |
AP Wolf
Inspector
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 219
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2003 - 2:12 pm: |
|
Oh dear
this is beginning to sound like we are vilifying the poor press of the time, well, they probably deserve it. But I do sometimes wonder if we are not caught in a worm hole here, and ascribe motives and scenarios to the press of the late Victorian age that are perhaps more appropriate to our own time zone. Not sure, and I find myself in two camps here, when much of the reporting of the time can be safely classified as the rants and raves of drunken journos - I know the scene as I was one meself - but then along comes a piece of reporting and research that shines. The example I quote is one that I do have a vested and biased interest in, but nontheless it still shines in its splendid isolation. When the Sun went for Thomas Cutbush and his uncle, Superintendent Charles of Scotland Yard, they did it with care and diligence - and one musn't forget that this was some considerable time after the press hysteria had died down - and unearthed many facts that the police had either ignored or shoved under the desk. The response that the Sun managed to evoke from the police - at the very highest level - still stands today as perhaps the most important official document ever issued concerning Jack. They even managed to track Cutbush down in Broadmoor and obtained permission to interview him there. How they did that I still don't know, as this was strictly forbidden.
So I view this effort as honest and good journalism.
But there is a lot of garbage out there as well.
The Pall Mall Gazette and WT Stead - as John points out - were involved in some horrendous skullduggery, not just with Jack but with all manner of contentious issue, and it is I think generally accepted that when a writer couldn't make a penny anywhere else he or she went to Stead and got their fourpence.
Many knocked at his door, and many became whore. |
Jeffrey Bloomfied
Sergeant
Username: Mayerling
Post Number: 47
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2003 - 7:10 pm: |
|
Hi A.P.,
Some were worse than turned into "whores" of
the Gazette. Bernard Shaw was pretty upset by
the way Stead (whom he never could take seriously
- he later said of Stead, he was killed in that
ridiculous shipwreck - referring to the Titanic
Disaster) wasted his talents. Stead never knew
how to use Shaw, except that he was a brilliant
music and theatre critic. He kept having Shaw
do book reviews, mostly of third rate novels.
Shaw always thought (heaven knows why) Stead would
have him do some social or government commentary.
Stead may have liked certain reforms, but he never
showed any interest in Shaw's socialist point of
view.
Jeff |
John Ruffels
Sergeant
Username: Johnr
Post Number: 42
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2003 - 9:45 pm: |
|
I think the problem we are discussing here appears to be crusading journalists with emerging reputations which need(ed) constant maintenance.
This sometimes interferes/interfered with their accuracy.
I agree though, some fine pieces of journalism
were published during the JTR period, and the Cutbush saga is worthy of further analysis.
Doubtless, Jayson Blair published some good things too, early on.
Nice point Jeff Bloomfield.Good thread A.P. and
Brian. |
John Ruffels
Sergeant
Username: Johnr
Post Number: 43
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2003 - 9:50 pm: |
|
Oops! The sharp Cutbush observations were yours A.P. Sorry. |
Robert Charles Linford
Detective Sergeant
Username: Robert
Post Number: 118
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2003 - 5:48 pm: |
|
Hi all
I can't resist mentioning the good old story of how Shaw once refused to pay a busker, because as a member of the press he expected to get his entertainment free.
Robert |
Dustin Gould
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Monday, December 15, 2003 - 3:11 pm: |
|
Based on all I've seen and read, the Times had found glaring errors in his work many times over, and refused to take action for the longest time, before they finally had no choice. Clearly, Blair has some serious mental issues to do what he did, and hurt the amount of people he hurt with his deceptions. He was using the Times to make some kind of point (whatever it was), but it was the responsibility of the Times to step in prevent him from doing so. If they had done so earlier than they did, it might have saved a few careers, and their reputation. |
Ray Speer
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, April 17, 2004 - 10:43 am: |
|
Let us not go too far in assuming that all (or most, or many) of the facts on record are rubbish.
Let us face the fact that there are no time machines and none of us are ever going to get an opportunity to investigate Jack the Ripper directly. All we can do is search out the records and try to discern what happened back then.
In the nineteenth century, scholars (many of them in Germany) took the only available records on the Roman Kingdom & Republic and declared them all baloney. If you believed such arch-skeptics, somebody else built up Rome and yet all the credit was mistakingly attributed to fictional characters whose activities never happened as recorded.
It always seemed to me absurd to denounce the only existant sources on a period, when the critic can produce no better contemporary account.
If a Jayson Blair did insert products of his imagination into 1880s accounts, there will never be a red flag marking that misinformation.
Anyone who indulges in such speculation too much will be a candidate for espousing eccentric theories ---- "If all of the witness accounts were distorted by errant journalists and careless police, it leaves open the possibility that Jack the Ripper was a Zulu warrior walking Whitechapel in full regalia ..." |
|
Use of these
message boards implies agreement and consent to our Terms of Use.
The views expressed here in no way reflect the views of the owners and
operators of Casebook: Jack the Ripper.
Our old message board content (45,000+ messages) is no longer available online, but a complete archive
is available on the Casebook At Home Edition, for 19.99 (US) plus shipping.
The "At Home" Edition works just like the real web site, but with absolutely no advertisements.
You can browse it anywhere - in the car, on the plane, on your front porch - without ever needing to hook up to
an internet connection. Click here to buy the Casebook At Home Edition.
|
|
|
|
