Posted on 08/15/2004 5:06:06 AM PDT by bad company
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Posted on Sun, Aug. 15, 2004
On Kerry, news services play catch-up
YVETTE WALKER READERS' REPRESENTATIVE
Some of you think the paper isn't doing its job of covering Sen. John Kerry and the controversy surrounding his military record.
Last week, readers called and wrote in, saying The Star hasn't covered critics' assertions that:
1) Kerry's claim of being in Cambodia on Christmas of 1968 was a lie; and that
2) One of the swift boat veterans says he was misquoted by the Boston Globe, and is still fully behind the anti-Kerry movement.
True, The Star hadn't published either of these news items as of Friday. By Friday afternoon however, the paper corrected itself and assigned a reporter to write the story. It ran Saturday.
Why the delay? The answer has to do with credibility. The Star had been waiting for credible sources to move stories over the news wire, which is how most of the news about national politics gets in the paper. When these sources were slow to act, editors felt they had to.
Star editors point out that last week they asked national news wires to provide stories about statements from Kerry and the swift boat veterans. “We are sensitive to the need to address this,” said Darryl Levings, national editor at The Star.
The only criticism here might be that editors waited too long to act. How long is too long? It's a difficult question to answer, and the fact that editors recognized the need for the story and assigned the task is laudable. Readers should also be praised for voicing concerns about the lack of a story.
The Star subscribes to several news wire services — the aforementioned credible sources — including Knight Ridder (The Star's parent company), The Associated Press, and the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post wire services.
On Friday, a Google News search turned up dozens of references to the Kerry stories. Many of them were on fringe news and personal Internet pages, sites that The Star and other mainstream media don't recognize as credible by themselves. Such news must be verified, preferably with two independent sources. That doesn't always happen on Internet sites, talk radio and cable TV news shows — even though such electronic media often are far ahead of other traditional news media in reporting controversy.
Sometimes the early reports do get it right. When that happens, traditional news media look like slowpokes. As with other celebrity and political news stories, electronic media frequently move faster than print news does. That's because they don't always have the system of checks and balances newspapers require.
The readers' representative can be reached at (816) 234-4487 from 8:30 a.m. to noon weekdays, or at
readerrep@kcstar.com.
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© 2004 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansascity.com
What a crock!!!
"including Knight Ridder (The Star's parent company), The Associated Press, and the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post wire services."
These are the sources they deem CREDIBLE?
I smell SURRENDER from the MS "Frenchie" Media!
TRANSLATION: We were more than happy to keep this buried, but you whiners threatened to cancel your subscriptions. So we actually had to get off our elitist butts and say something.
What do their reporters do in the newsroom? Wait for the wire service to fire up?
"What do their reporters do in the newsroom? Wait for the wire service to fire up?"
I tend to think so. I would post more articles, but the star seems to be "behind the curve".
Ah, so the internet and Swift Boat vets, more than one or two, aren't reliable sources, but news wires the Star subscribes to are? Like the NYTimes, the LATimes, the WashPost? Reuters, these same grouops who got together recently to decide how to manage the news from now until November? Something smells rotten. The KC Star has been caught with its pants down.
"What do their reporters do in the newsroom? Wait for the wire service to fire up?"
That is an excellent question. Apparently the locals confine themselves to fires, crime and car accidents and get national and international information from sources that support their world view. Her comment was very revealing.
LOL
You go to Journalism school and get a job at your local paper. All that money going to waste to cut and paste.
So they bury the story on a Saturday.
THink I am going to vomit.
Ok let me see if I have this right.
Major newspaper won't report information from personal websites because of questionable credibility. If anyone lacks credibility it is major newspapers such as the Boston Globe, the New York Times, or the Washington Post. Time does not allow me to go into their history of fabricating facts.
Still the very fact that a newspaper wrongly reported that a Swift Boat vet had recanted his story against Kerry shows that major newspapers are not that concerned with corroborating sources. So why isn't a personal website where at least the identity of the source can be independently confirmed by a newspaper's reader more credible than the anonymous or unnamed sources relied upon by major newspapers? Why not put the story out into the marketplace of ideas and let the truth prevail.
The reason for the decline of newspaper readership (and the majors inflate their circulation numbers) is because of lost credibility on the part of the major newspapers. I am convinced that people buy newspapers for the information from the advertisements not for the "News". Isn't that ironic?
Of course a "leak" from a Senate Democrat would be printed up, ASAP.
LOL!
Some papers are entering a death spiral. As readers abandon the papers, advertisers do, too.
What is their record on reporting anything related to Bush....example..AWOL or DWI story?
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