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FAKEY ISLES
It’s a Jayson Blair moment for the New Zealand Herald:
Last week, the Herald on Sunday published two news reports based on a purported interview with former South Auckland police officer Anthony Solomona. Mr Solomona’s legal representative, John Haigh QC, wrote to this newspaper on October 17, saying Mr Solomona had not met anyone from the Herald on Sunday and that the statement that the interview had occurred was false.
The Herald on Sunday initiated an immediate investigation into the complaint. We regret to advise that Mr Haigh’s advice is correct.
The reporter who wrote the articles, John Manukia, has confirmed that the interview did not take place. He neither met, nor spoke to, Mr Solomona. The quotes as attributed to Mr Solomona were fabricated as was the reported content of the purported interview.
Mr Manukia is no longer with the Herald. More from editor Shayne Currie:
Inevitably there will be questions over the checks and balances around news stories and these are under review. However, I do believe they are robust - they are virtually the same as any other newsroom in the country - and it’s difficult to see how Manukia’s deceit could have been picked up before publication.
It was elaborate to the point where senior editors were provided times and locations of the so-called meetings with Mr Solomona - and the news editor was provided a full transcript of written quotes.
Astoundingly, they had all been made up. Manukia neither met nor spoke to Mr Solomona, and was at a loss to explain how he thought he might get away with it.
The invented reports have been swept from the Herald’s site, but live on in Google cache. Manukia’s bogus quotes, attributed to Anthony Solomona, are interesting in light of his present circumstances:
“Status is very important among Polynesians. We work hard to get status just like I worked hard to get mine. But all that is gone now.
“I will never get it back.”
Well, nothing like this has ever happened in any *other* newsrooms, has it? I mean they never, ever put out anything that was faked *coughTANG memoscough* would they? After all, if that happened, surely they would change their ‘checks and balances’ so they would catch stuff, right? Right? Right? Somebody? Anybody? Bueller?
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2005 10 23 at 10:05 PM • permalinkThe “fake but accurate” school of journalism believes that the world operates in the manner that the reporter believes it operates. So when the reporter writes a story, he starts out with his thinking on the matter and simply goes about looking for confirmation of it. In most cases, he could write the entire article without so much as leaving his desk to interview any interested parties.
If he can’t obtain any facts that support his beliefs on the issues, he seldom concludes that his beliefs are wrong, just that the “other side” has been clever in hiding the truth. So he either makes up proof or he readily accepts anything that comes to him that coincides with those beliefs, regardless of the integrity of the proof or the source of it.
See Rather, Dan, TAG fax.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 10 23 at 10:12 PM • permalinkI know I’m being a bit of a killjoy, but the editor is right. If a reporter goes to the trouble of forging supporting evidence, he will probably get the story through. The amazing thing about the Jayson Blair case was that he didn’t even bother to file false expense claims, and they still didn’t catch on…
Certainly none of murdoch’s columnists at The Australian would use a spoof piece to attribute quotes to a former politician they didn’t like, and then wait a week before printing a retraction at the bottom of a long piece unrelated to the previous misrepresentation.
And the daily papers wonder why their readership and subscriptions are down across the board with such quality journalism. Timmy’d be able to relate given the Bulletin’s sterling sales numbers.
Bloody brilliant move by Milne though to reinforce everything Latham said about him in his book.
Posted by timmys still a wingnut on 2005 10 23 at 10:15 PM • permalinkjic - The editor could have called Solomona. “Hey, did you enjoy your interview on Sunday? Eh, what’s that?” I don’t know what the standard operating procedure is, but that seems to be a pretty simple “check and balance” that would catch every single fake interview.
Posted by Matt Moore on 2005 10 23 at 10:16 PM • permalinkInevitably there will be questions over the checks and balances around news stories and these are under review. However, I do believe they are robust - they are virtually the same as any other newsroom in the country - and it’s difficult to see how Manukia’s deceit could have been picked up before publication.
How about this for a check and balance. Whenever an article is submitted that includes a quote, the editor calls the person quoted to ask one question: “Did you speak to our reporter?”
He doesn’t have to ask any questions about the substance of the interview or the quotes, just “do you know our reporter?” How hard is that?
Posted by wronwright on 2005 10 23 at 10:20 PM • permalink# 7
How about this for a check and balance. Whenever an article is submitted that includes a quote, the editor calls the person quoted to ask one question: “Did you speak to our reporter?”
bloody hell, I actually agree with you wronwright.
I might change the question slightly to, “did you say this ... .”
Mind you in this day and age of limited communications, one can’t expect reporters to actually seek out those they’re quoting for comment.Posted by timmys still a wingnut on 2005 10 23 at 10:23 PM • permalinkWell gosh dern it Matt, you stole the point of my comment. Probably the only good one I’ve had this year too. You beat me by only four minutes but I notice you didn’t include the quote, like I did. (Damn it, next time I’ll make everyone re-read the article).
Now I’ll probably go weeks without having one decent thing to say. Maybe I should go and check the font cabinet.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 10 23 at 10:28 PM • permalinkLooks like our resident passive aggressive troll ‘wingnut’ is in passive mode.
Roll over and beg for me Wingy! Woof!Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 10 23 at 10:28 PM • permalinkOh my god. And if it wasn’t bad enough that Matt Moore beat my comment (by not considerately and graciously including the quote like I did), timmys still a wingnut agrees with me? Agrees? WITH ME?
TSAW, agree with Matt Moore! He wrote it first! He gets credit for it! My god man, cut me a break here. Matt Moore, Matt Moore, he’s the man you should agree with. Matt Moore!
Oh, just give me the Jack Daniels. No glass is necesssary.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 10 23 at 10:38 PM • permalinkOh, just give me the Jack Daniels. No glass is necesssary
Which of course wronwright, is why most of your comments come across as written by a drunk.
Posted by timmys still a wingnut on 2005 10 23 at 10:41 PM • permalinkjic - What the hell else do editors do? I guess all their time is taken up making sure the headlines are bolded.
Like I said, I don’t know if it’s practical or if any newspaper actually does it. But for an editor to pretend that there was absolutely no way to catch this (he made up dates and times, he’s that devious!) is disingenuous.
Posted by Matt Moore on 2005 10 23 at 10:43 PM • permalinkWell, wronwright’s comments sound like those of a drunk because he’s… drunk. What’s your excuse, Timmy?
Posted by Matt Moore on 2005 10 23 at 10:45 PM • permalinkjic - If I was an editor I’d definitely assume that my reporters were lying to me. After Blair, Rather, Mapes, New Orleans, Glass, and every other bogus journalism scandal of the last couple years how could I do otherwise?
Posted by Matt Moore on 2005 10 23 at 10:54 PM • permalinkMy comments doo nott sound like I’m dunk MMattt. They sound enlightened ... and ... stuff like that. Yeah.
(if I wasn’t so freaking drunk I’d find my Voltaire .. ok my Barlett)
Posted by wronwright on 2005 10 23 at 10:58 PM • permalinkRather and Mapes are certainly liars. They’re still trying to claim that the memos might be real or that they were duped by a vast blogging conspiracy, fer crissakes.
It’s difficult to see how Manukia’s deceit could have been picked up before publication.
If you don’t find that comment disingenuous when a simple phone call would have picked up the deceit then I don’t think it’s worth arguing any further.
Posted by Matt Moore on 2005 10 23 at 11:04 PM • permalinkI have to agree with jic. Even if I were an editor who assumed all my staff were secretly lying their way through the day I’d still focus my “checking and balancing” of stories on everything else before bothering to spend a minute verifying interviews with quotes. The latter is simply too stupid a thing for the majority of reporters to even consider faking, since it is almost inevitable they’ll be caught. Only reason to make followup calls to interview subjects is if I assume all my reporters are not only liars but also incredibly stupid. Even in this event, though, I think I’d be spending my time getting the personnel department to clean out their desks.
As I wrote:
So he either makes up proof or he readily accepts anything that comes to him that coincides with those beliefs, regardless of the integrity of the proof or the source of it.
I don’t think reporters that make up quotes, of at least most reporters, think of it as lying. They think of it as taking a short cut to save time. They’re certain that there are people out there that would give them the quotes that would support their article. They just haven’t found them yet and they don’t have the time nor the inclination to hunt for them.
In the same way, Dan and Mary probably didn’t think of the TANG memo as being something less than acceptable. (After all, it was a fax, not an original and could therefore not be conclusively attested to). They saw it as confirming their beliefs (that Bush was a bad no account). Since their beliefs were unassailable, the fax was good enough.
It’s a matter of holding a biased mind set. Such persons should not be in journalism, and yet the MSM is chock full of them.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 10 23 at 11:34 PM • permalinkI suppose the benifit of doubt is with the peper. If the dodgy reporter had an otherwise solid background, you would expect him to be taken at his word.
If however he was a “new boy” or came under a cloud you would expect some oversight.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2005 10 23 at 11:39 PM • permalinkFabricating journalists get away with it - for as long as they get away with - because they usually make astute observations on how their newsroom/editorial structure works. Most editors, it’s true, can’t be bothered phoning every source in every story. 1) They assume that no one would be so crass and self-destructive as to lie and 2)that’s someone else’s job. At a magazine, there are fact-checkers; at a newspaper, well, there are sub-editors and assigning editors who’ll suffer almost as much as the writer if something’s been cooked. The chain of command travels up and down - they’re supposed to take the fall and the consequences.
But a really ambitious fabricator - a Glass or a Blair - will have figured out what his or her editors want to hear, and provide it neatly. Ever read Stephen Glass’ pieces for The New Republic? The drunken, date-raping Young Republicans? The brokerage houses with altars to Alan Greenspan? Hey - it’s not that those things didn’t happen; it’s that they could happen, if you just believe it enough. No one questioned Glass because, even if it smelled funny, it had to be true. Because it confirmed their worldview.
So - once again. Fake but accurate. Glass was years ago, before the war or Mapes and Rather or any of this stuff. But it was all there, ticking along like clockwork.
Posted by rick mcginnis on 2005 10 24 at 12:22 AM • permalinkAnyone who has read or seen “Once were warriors” or even chanced to be adjacent to a haka performing team- would say that while excessive force is not on by police,those maories and islanders do not always play nice.At least the ex cop could not be branded racist.
Journalists are now equated with lawyers on the public trust meter….
Hey Wron meths drinker in the gutter(not)
take THIS
Comma,comma comma, comma,com -com a com,
yeah,yeah,yeah…that’s me.Many years ago, friends of mine were interviewed for a local paper in Adelaide (The Advertiser). The journo made up every quote he attributed to them.
It wasn’t a political story, it was merely a puff piece on people contributing grapes to the paper’s own wine-making publicity stunt.
Obviously what they had actually said didn’t fit the story the journo had in mind so he made it all up. My thought at the time (and it hasn’t changed) is that if they make up quotes for unimportant puff pieces, then what are they like when it comes to the big stories?
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2005 10 24 at 12:34 AM • permalinkFolks, I’ve got some hurricaney weathery stuff going on on my side of the world so I have no time to waste with people like “timmys,” so I’ve banned him. Now he can go play elsewhere.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 10 24 at 12:42 AM • permalinkAndrea, I don’t care a tit about timmy. But crash has been stealing, yes, STEALING, commas from the font cabinet. He has a key. He does!
And since I’m
snitchinginforming you of this, sortelli has been nuts with the CAP LETTERS. CAPS HERE, CAPS THERE. Doesn’t matter if he’s throwing away other people’s caps. He’s a neocon so he don’t care about other people’s needs.Andrea, can you change the lock on the font cabinet? Just one key for you and one for me. But don’t give one to Tim Blair. He can’t be trusted with a pearing knife let lone a key to the fonts. And my god, don’t give one to The Real JeffS. Oh no. And for that matter, keys should not be given to Dave S, and Richard McEnroe, and PW. Because I don’t trust any of those guys.
And if you think it would be just as easy to BAN THEM ALL, well, maybe that’s just as well. If that’s easier, you know, to BAN THEM ALL. Because we can’t trust any of them. Rogues and thieves, to the last man.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 10 24 at 01:02 AM • permalinkSorry I’m late to the party.
Wronwright is absolutely correct:
The “fake but accurate” school of journalism believes that the world operates in the manner that the reporter believes it operates. So when the reporter writes a story, he starts out with his thinking on the matter and simply goes about looking for confirmation of it. In most cases, he could write the entire article without so much as leaving his desk to interview any interested parties.
I lost track of the number of times I was handed a piece of paper by my news editor who said ‘Interview so-and-so, and come back with this story’.
It really didn’t matter whether if the interview went into a completely different direction. You were told when you went out what the story was and God help you if you didn’t come back with it.
Also news editors have a list of ‘people who are good for a quote’ who will be guaranteed to slant the story whichever way you want.
—Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2005 10 24 at 02:28 AM • permalink#41 Also news editors have a list of ‘people who are good for a quote’ who will be guaranteed to slant the story whichever way you want.
Good point Nora. In a similar vein from today’s Australian:
Forget pedophilia cover-ups by the Catholics or suspect finances in western suburbs mega-churches; these days, harried journos are doing ring-arounds of the local cathedrals whenever they need quotes to support a story—and their own biases.
James Morrow: Forgive us, Father, for we have spinnedPosted by Art Vandelay on 2005 10 24 at 02:56 AM • permalinkthey are virtually the same as any other newsroom in the country
First of all, “virtually” is NOT a synonym for “nearly”, (although the trend now seems ineluctable). Think of “virtual reality”. (/Aside)
The point I think is being missed here is one I’m pretty sure I’ve made before, here—the “lesson” of RatherGate is NOT that Rather & Mapes are flaming-idiot lefties (duh), the lesson is that there was not ONE SINGLE RIGHT leaning person in that newsroom, who would have/could have/should have said, “Double-U Tee Eff are you doing, guys?!?!?” THAT is why the left-leaning media is not a hallucination of the right. Mmmmkay?
The second point which I think is “the most important of the story yet overlooked”: after Jayson BlairGate, reporters went off to the afflicted parties, asking “Why, if you knew that the NYT was reporting nonsense, didn’t you speak up?”
The answer, far more interesting imho than the JB story itself, was: “So what? Making sh*t up is what the NYT always does! What else is new, city slicker? Wanna beer?”
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2005 10 24 at 03:18 AM • permalinkMiss Andrea, stay away from the superdome ok? - Oh, and if you see Sean Penn in a boat with a red plastic cup could you kick him in the nuts for me? cheers.
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 10 24 at 04:18 AM • permalinkIt’s easy for me to stay away from the Superdome, since I live 550 miles from New Orleans, which is where the Superdome is.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 10 24 at 12:10 PM • permalinkDo we know that they DON’T do that? The good ones, I mean.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2005 10 24 at 03:46 PM • permalinkThe quotes as attributed to Mr Solomona were fabricated as was the reported content of the purported interview.
And how exactly is this different from “reports” of interviews that actually take place?
Particularly with interviewees the “reporter” doesn’t like? :-(Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2005 10 24 at 04:00 PM • permalinkRobust checks and balances: when complete amateurs catch you out and you can spin your way clear…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 10 24 at 07:41 PM • permalinkcan = can’t ... that “can” is obviously a complete fabrication.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 10 24 at 07:42 PM • permalinkWRONWRIGHT, <u>keys</u> are for beginners…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 10 24 at 07:44 PM • permalink
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Inevitably there will be questions over the checks and balances around news stories and these are under review. However, I do believe they are robust - they are virtually the same as any other newsroom in the country
Well, that’s certainly reassuring. Not.