"Mistakes" committed in current journalistic practice are cited
Nuñez Grassals said they are substituting journalism of information for journalism from sources
Diario Libre
SD. Last Monday the United States magazine Rolling Stone apologized for a publication done last November, under the title "A rape on campus." In the article they told the story of Jackie, a young university student who was supposedly raped by seven men, members of a fraternity at the University of Virginia. After publication, the case was investigated by the authorities and they could not confirm or find any evidence that it had ever occurred. The magazine apologized for its "mistake," and took down the article from its webpage.
In January 2013, the Spanish newspaper El Pais published on its front page a photograph which supposedly showed the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, in a very serious health condition, months before his death. Later, the media apologized for the fake image, and alleged that they had been tricked by the source which provided the photograph.
Both cases were attributed to mistakes in the practice of journalism, a consequence of little or no comparison of sources, according to the critics which appeared as the result of each publication. Another case of international repute was that of the "Little Wolf of Wall Street," the young New York student, Mohammed Islam, who said he had accumulated a fortune of more than US$72 million investing in the stock market, and after several media repeated this, he admitted that everything was invented. At the international level there is also the case of Tomasso Debenedetti, the Italian who sold fake interviews.
In the Dominican press, the most recent case occurred with the telephone call to the program "Enfoque Final," which is transmitted by NCDN, Channel 37, supposedly made by one of the accused in the killing of the Deputy Minister of Energy and Minds, Victoriano Santos Hilario and his son Victor Santos.
During the call, the person that said he was one of the persons accused of the double homicide, said that the crime was done for hire. After the investigations by the National Police and the Attorney General, these entities said that the story of the telephone call was denied by the accused. Nevertheless, the El Nacional newspaper published on Tuesday statements by the District Attorney of Cotui, Juana Maria Hernandez, in which she confirmed the authenticity of the phone call, but she attributed it to another one of the defendants, and not to the person initially identified.
Other questions appeared when some media repeated the story of the calls that were supposedly made by the convicted drug trafficker Quirino Ernesto Paulino Castillo, to the program Hilando Fino, in which he said that he financed the campaign of former President Leonel Fernandez. The critics at that moment included some media that refused to publish the information, without being sure of who made the calls. Finally, Paulino Castillo reiterated the statements during an interview on Skype, so that everyone could see him. So far they have not proven the veracity or not of the report.
Bias in the news
The well known journalist and university professor Rafael Nuñez Grassals questions the path that journalism has followed these last few years.
"The stories are pretty incomplete; they are carrying out a journalism of sources, not of information. The journalist doesn't go to the source on the ground, and handles everything with the telephone and the Internet."
From his point of view, journalism is a warm profession, one of meeting face-to-face with people. He feels that journalism from years ago was better, when the reporters "got muddy" in the streets with the people. "It is very different when you see something and feel it, or when others tell you about it. And this is what tells me that there is a substitution of journalism of information for that of sources."
He feels that this substitution results in a biased journalism. He also regrets that today there are no editors with the feelings of yesterday, when they were a sort of trainer of someone aspiring to be a journalist, who they pushed and guided, even going so far as to recommend the authors that they should read. "Today they only ask (to the reporter), what did you bring?" he criticized.
Besides insisting on the need to read the great journalists (Eloy Martinez and Gabriel Garcia Marquez are the first names he mentions), Nuñez Grassals calls on the new reporters to follow steps which he feels are fundamental in the ethical exercise of the profession. In his speech, which he gave at a university, under the title "For ethics in the news. Towards a healthy style of informing," the professor detailed what he called as the four "very well known verbs, but which are not always attended, in spite of the fact that they constitute the pillars which makes it possible to honor the commitment with precise information."
He refers to verifying the information on which the stories are based; comparing the available versions; proving the conclusions obtained through the process of examining the material gathered; and showing with absolute precision what was proved.
Mistakes to avoid
As the result of the apology by the Rolling Stone magazine, the directors of the media published on their webpage the report on the investigation of the case that they requested from the School of Journalism of Columbia University, which indicates the failures of the media, and where they attribute the responsibility to poor journalistic practice and not to the fake story of the source. "The failure includes reporting, editing, editorial supervision and proof of the facts," says one cite regarding the report which the BBC World newspaper reproduced, in its edition of 7 April. Based on the same case, the blog Classes of Journalism, of the journalist and Peruvian professor Esther Vargas, she identified 10 lessons regarding the mistakes of the false story of which we will cite a few: 1- you cannot fall in love with the sources: journalists should doubt, and keep a distance from the sources. 2 - the apologies of the editors and journalists should be clear and real; 3 - you must contrast and cross reference your sources; 4 - the source does not impose the methodology of the work, nor the exactitude of it; 5 - narrative journalism is not an umbrella to re-create stories which are removed from journalism; 6 - doubting the stories that are too good and rounded is the duty of the editor.
In January 2013, the Spanish newspaper El Pais published on its front page a photograph which supposedly showed the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, in a very serious health condition, months before his death. Later, the media apologized for the fake image, and alleged that they had been tricked by the source which provided the photograph.
Both cases were attributed to mistakes in the practice of journalism, a consequence of little or no comparison of sources, according to the critics which appeared as the result of each publication. Another case of international repute was that of the "Little Wolf of Wall Street," the young New York student, Mohammed Islam, who said he had accumulated a fortune of more than US$72 million investing in the stock market, and after several media repeated this, he admitted that everything was invented. At the international level there is also the case of Tomasso Debenedetti, the Italian who sold fake interviews.
In the Dominican press, the most recent case occurred with the telephone call to the program "Enfoque Final," which is transmitted by NCDN, Channel 37, supposedly made by one of the accused in the killing of the Deputy Minister of Energy and Minds, Victoriano Santos Hilario and his son Victor Santos.
During the call, the person that said he was one of the persons accused of the double homicide, said that the crime was done for hire. After the investigations by the National Police and the Attorney General, these entities said that the story of the telephone call was denied by the accused. Nevertheless, the El Nacional newspaper published on Tuesday statements by the District Attorney of Cotui, Juana Maria Hernandez, in which she confirmed the authenticity of the phone call, but she attributed it to another one of the defendants, and not to the person initially identified.
Other questions appeared when some media repeated the story of the calls that were supposedly made by the convicted drug trafficker Quirino Ernesto Paulino Castillo, to the program Hilando Fino, in which he said that he financed the campaign of former President Leonel Fernandez. The critics at that moment included some media that refused to publish the information, without being sure of who made the calls. Finally, Paulino Castillo reiterated the statements during an interview on Skype, so that everyone could see him. So far they have not proven the veracity or not of the report.
Bias in the news
The well known journalist and university professor Rafael Nuñez Grassals questions the path that journalism has followed these last few years.
"The stories are pretty incomplete; they are carrying out a journalism of sources, not of information. The journalist doesn't go to the source on the ground, and handles everything with the telephone and the Internet."
From his point of view, journalism is a warm profession, one of meeting face-to-face with people. He feels that journalism from years ago was better, when the reporters "got muddy" in the streets with the people. "It is very different when you see something and feel it, or when others tell you about it. And this is what tells me that there is a substitution of journalism of information for that of sources."
He feels that this substitution results in a biased journalism. He also regrets that today there are no editors with the feelings of yesterday, when they were a sort of trainer of someone aspiring to be a journalist, who they pushed and guided, even going so far as to recommend the authors that they should read. "Today they only ask (to the reporter), what did you bring?" he criticized.
Besides insisting on the need to read the great journalists (Eloy Martinez and Gabriel Garcia Marquez are the first names he mentions), Nuñez Grassals calls on the new reporters to follow steps which he feels are fundamental in the ethical exercise of the profession. In his speech, which he gave at a university, under the title "For ethics in the news. Towards a healthy style of informing," the professor detailed what he called as the four "very well known verbs, but which are not always attended, in spite of the fact that they constitute the pillars which makes it possible to honor the commitment with precise information."
He refers to verifying the information on which the stories are based; comparing the available versions; proving the conclusions obtained through the process of examining the material gathered; and showing with absolute precision what was proved.
Mistakes to avoid
As the result of the apology by the Rolling Stone magazine, the directors of the media published on their webpage the report on the investigation of the case that they requested from the School of Journalism of Columbia University, which indicates the failures of the media, and where they attribute the responsibility to poor journalistic practice and not to the fake story of the source. "The failure includes reporting, editing, editorial supervision and proof of the facts," says one cite regarding the report which the BBC World newspaper reproduced, in its edition of 7 April. Based on the same case, the blog Classes of Journalism, of the journalist and Peruvian professor Esther Vargas, she identified 10 lessons regarding the mistakes of the false story of which we will cite a few: 1- you cannot fall in love with the sources: journalists should doubt, and keep a distance from the sources. 2 - the apologies of the editors and journalists should be clear and real; 3 - you must contrast and cross reference your sources; 4 - the source does not impose the methodology of the work, nor the exactitude of it; 5 - narrative journalism is not an umbrella to re-create stories which are removed from journalism; 6 - doubting the stories that are too good and rounded is the duty of the editor.
Diario Libre
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