Anonymous sourcing means 'tweaked' quotes

Ed Cohen raises another valid concern about the rise of anonymous comments in BOTH old and new media. And that is that anonymous comments usually have the commenter "tweaking" the quote before it sees the light of day.

In other words, BOTH old AND new media that use anonymous sources are becoming ever more propaganda by the day.

'New media' can write misleading headlines, get journalism wrong

Bora Zivkovic, or Coturnix, is a very good science writer. And, he's an activist touter of the wonders of "new media." But, a Facebook note of his shows part of why I take "new media" with a grain of salt.

Start with the header "journalism" when he's just talking about academic journalism. Especially online, where there's no headline length limit, why the header didn't say "science journalism" or "academic journalism," I don't know.

The post is about whether or not public information officers do journalism. In academia, arguably, maybe they do. It's still iffy. Did the University of Utah's PIO do "journalism" after the Fleischmann/Pons "oops" of 1989? I doubt it.

But, in the second half of his post, Bora, through a couple of analogies, talks about general-purpose journalism, and is totally wrong there. Plus, his idea that an energy company should sponsor science pages in a newspaper? What idiocy in general. And that they should do it because newspapers are losing ad money?

Rather, Bora, and friends of yours such as Jay Rosen, that's argument for MY shibboleth — paywalls for online newspapers. Or, at a minimum alternative, delayed publishing of online content, at least that which is locally generated.

Anonymous sourcing: ain't just the MSM

Glenn Greenwald rightly bemoans what seems to be a worsening of the use of anonymous sourcing in inside-the-Beltway reporting.

But, as I e-mailed him, this isn't just a "mainstream media" phenomenon.

I’ll hold out Talking Points Memo as a prime example, since it developed from “just a blog” into doing its own news reporting.

A couple of months ago, for example (sorry, don’t have link), one of its staff reported the “latest” on Obama’s heath care push, with a couple of different angles from inside the WH. Nothing close to national security involved, of course.

But... At least five or six different anonymously sourced comments.

Well, I was, to be blunt, disgusted to some degree when I saw that, and I think a few other TPM regular readers were too. That said, neither the reporter nor Josh Marshall commented in response, said we’re sorry, etc.

I’ll venture a guess that as “new media” tries to get more and more into reporting, not just commentary, it will do more of the same selling itself out.

So, let’s not say this is just an MSM problem.

When I grow up, I want to be a bankrupt media mogul too!

Dean Singleton, the man who built up, then overbuilt, MediaNews, while simultaneously wrecking the Associated Press and undermining its connection to its traditional newspaper members in the Internet Age by letting AP whore after news aggregators, once again shows his moxie, bullshit level, or whatever.

As Media News' parent company (a shell organization, if you will — Dean-o was one of the first media moguls in on that idea) emerges from bankruptcy court, not only does the Deanster get to stay on as CEO of the newly reconstituted Affiliated Media, he does so with a nice $650K base salary, and his MediaNews co-founder apparently getting pushed out the door.

Meanwhile, we have the brown-nosing of billionaire Jon Huntsman Sr., father of the former Utah governor, callling Dean-o "a smart businessman."

Can we change that to "a bamboozling businessman"?