Newspaper apologises for reporter's trolling

[Locutus]

There is an implied contract between a newspaper and its readers. The paper prints the truth. Readers believe that it's true.

It's not always so simple, of course. There are nuances in how a story is presented, what words are used to describe the action. Papers have personalities, and no two are exactly alike, but at the end of the day, facts are facts. And a good newspaper holds nothing more sacred than its role to tell the truth. Always. As fully and as fairly as possible.

This is our guiding principle, so it is with heavy heart that we tell you the Cape Cod Times has broken that trust. An internal review has found that one of our reporters wrote dozens of stories that included one or more sources who do not exist.

The reporter was Karen Jeffrey, 59, a writer for the Cape Cod Times since 1981. In an audit of her work, Times editors have been unable to find 69 people in 34 stories since 1998, when we began archiving stories electronically.


more


An apology to Times readers | CapeCodOnline.com


h/t Fark

 

[MHz]

The facts are quite different.
(in part)
In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.

The Media Can Legally Lie

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

I am amazed that she would make up stuff on really stupid stories. The feel good crap which nobody really gives a flying frack about.

 

[karrie]

I am amazed that she would make up stuff on really stupid stories. The feel good crap which nobody really gives a flying frack about.

Why leave the house for the feel good crap no one gives a frack about when you can just as easily stay home and write bull.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

Why leave the house for the feel good crap no one gives a frack about when you can just as easily stay home and write bull.

Obviously she felt this was the way to go.

 

[karrie]

What I don't get is, how is what she did 'trolling'? Sounds like pure laziness, not an attempt to stir up anything.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

What I don't get is, how is what she did 'trolling'? Sounds like pure laziness, not an attempt to stir up anything.

That looks to be added by Locutus. It's not on the original story. Also details that when she did court reports and stuff, she was actually accurate. It was only the little stuff where issues arose.

It sounds to me she may have been unclear on the difference between fiction and non-fiction as it applies to personal interest stories.

 

[L Gilbert]

“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.” - Mark Twain

"I am personally acquainted with hundreds of journalists, and the opinion of the majority of them would not be worth tuppence in private, but when they speak in print it is the newspaper that is talking (the pygmy scribe is not visible) and then their utterances shake the community like the thunders of prophecy." - M Twain
"It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble is that the stupid people -- who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations -- do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper, and there is where the harm lies." - M Twain
Very astute dude, that Mark Twain.​