Monthly Archives: April 2018

Some interesting facts and figures about how people consume news differently depending on the device they’re using – and what may be ahead when fake news stops generating big bucks for its perpetrators.

Read the piece here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

David Beard at Poynter has some thoughts – and facts – on this topic in this morning’s column.

Why did one media company secretly pay out $30,000 for a rumor, which it later quashed, that President Trump fathered a child with an employee? Why has that company gone to such lengths to keep others silent about their associations with Trump?

Those questions, set off by reports in the New Yorker and the Associated Press, roiled reporters on Thursday, prompting cautious what-we-know-now reporting and the most qualified of extrapolations.

“If nothing else, the newest example builds the circumstantial case that something was afoot as Trump was trying to win the presidency,” wrote the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake.

Here’s the AP lede:

“Eight months before the company that owns the National Enquirer paid $150,000 to a former Playboy Playmate who claimed she’d had an affair with Donald Trump, the tabloid’s parent made a $30,000 payment to a less famous individual: a former doorman at one of the real estate mogul’s New York City buildings.

“As it did with the ex-Playmate, the Enquirer signed the ex-doorman to a contract that effectively prevented him from going public with a juicy tale that might hurt Trump’s campaign for president.”

The contract’s penalty, according to the AP and the New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow: The doorman would have to pay $1 million if he breathed a word about this rumor.

Federal prosecutors are investigating the pre-election hush payments, including $130,000 to a Trump-affiliated porn star, to see if they violated campaign laws.

Publishing a rumor — or the quashing of a rumor — brings out journalistic and ethical queasiness. The New Yorker took pains to note it had uncovered no evidence that Trump fathered the child in the 1980s. The alleged daughter wouldn’t answer questions, and the father of the family said the claim was false and that the National Enquirer had put the family in a difficult situation.

Farrow quoted him as saying: “I don’t understand what they had to pay this guy for.”

The ex-doorman defended the veracity of his story to the Post’s Carol Leonnig on Thursday. “You know, I took a polygraph test.”

During the AP’s reporting, the Enquirer’s parent company threatened to sue and hired the New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, which challenged the accuracy of the AP’s reporting. The AP acknowledged spiking the story in August and later reviving it, Politico’s Michael Calderone reports. BTW, David Boies was also involved in Harvey Weinstein’s attempt to muzzle reporting of decades of the Hollywood mogul’s sexual harassment and abuse.

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Posted by Tim Morrissey

The Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard has a piece on this topic. It’s becoming increasingly important for reporters to have a grasp of the technology that’s involved in our everyday life.

This seems like an idea whose time has come.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

The RTDNA has some very useful advice – and some rather frightening statistics about reporter arrests here.

And the WBA Newsroom site has specific laws and rules for Wisconsin reporters here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

An interesting column from the University of Texas – Austin Center For Media Engagement.

Read it here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

The next generation of Journalists is already influencing the work of the professional Journalists.

The first of a three-part series from Poynter is here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

That’s the title of this piece from Columbia Journalism Review. Interesting reading. Are you watching Zuckerberg’s testimony?

Posted by Tim Morrissey

A strong opinion piece about Sinclair TV’s mandatory anchor scripts, from Poynter ethics watchdog Indira Lakshmanan.

Read it here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

Such is the headline that can be gleaned from this report from The Knight Foundation.

Not so much rosiness for radio and print, though.

Read the report here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

We’ve all made mistakes which probably could have been caught by a second look at our copy. Most people who work in broadcast newsrooms have never worked in a situation where someone has the official function of editor, who must clear the copy before it’s aired or shared.

There are smaller errors of grammar or spelling which often manage to make it to air or chyron.  And there are larger errors – errors in fact or in identifying a photo – that sometimes make it through to air.

Much is being said in print media discussion boards about the impact of cutting so many people who were editors; editors who were de facto proofreaders, who had the responsibility of catching errors before they wound up in print.

There are plenty of examples to point to in both broadcast and print news, but the one The Denver Post made a few days ago can serve as a cautionary tale about what happens when no one is taking a second look at what’s presented to the public as news.

Running a picture of Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia and identifying it as Coors Field in Denver is one of those unforced errors that will live for a long time.

The moral of the story: proofread your copy.

Posted by Tim Morrissey