Tuesday, April 20, 2004
The Telegraph Runs a One-Source Story
...And an anonymous source at that!
Several people have written in asking me to comment on this piece in the UK's Daily Telegraph
My take: this article is a piece of garbage that wouldn't even pass muster in a high school journalism class. Here's why:
1.) The entire article is based on an interview with one source.
2.) The source is anonymous.
3.) The source claims to be speaking for the "British chain of command."
4.) The reporter doesn't even make a game attempt at verifying or corroborating the story told by his anonymous source by interviewing other British officers. You'd think a British reporter would be able to find someone willing to talk to him!
5.) He makes no attempt to contextualize the story with the fact that British troops have been concentrated in the anti-Saddam Shia south all along. American troops, on the other hand, have been concentrated in the Sunni triangle--including Ramadi, Fallujah, and Tikrit--and had always been facing a very different war.
6. The headline uses 'officers' in the plural form, even though only one officer is anonymously attributed as saying anything like that. So the paper's editors are buying into this crap.
If the reporter had done a little more, well, reporting, then one of three things would have happened.
1.) He would have found no one to corroborate the first officer's claim.
2.) He would have found other officers who would flatly contradict the first officer's claim.
3.) He would have found more officers who would corroborate the claim--hopefully on the record.
In the first instance, there's no story.
In the second instance, the story is actually positive.
In the third instance, he would have had a story, but it would look nothing like this piece of trash. It would have been well sourced with reactions from several British officers, and possibly a reaction from the Americans as well.
But in no case would a properly reported article look like this one.
It's a fine example of how not to write a news story!
Where are the Telegraph's guidelines on anonymous sourcing? Don't they tell their reporters that if a source wants to stay off the record, then you'd damn well better be able to verify his story somewhere else?
The Telegraph should have sent this right back to the reporter and told him not to hand in any more copy until he did his $&#*ing job.
I mean, Jayson Blair did better job of reporting when he was plagiarizing from home!
Splash, out
Jason
Several people have written in asking me to comment on this piece in the UK's Daily Telegraph
My take: this article is a piece of garbage that wouldn't even pass muster in a high school journalism class. Here's why:
1.) The entire article is based on an interview with one source.
2.) The source is anonymous.
3.) The source claims to be speaking for the "British chain of command."
4.) The reporter doesn't even make a game attempt at verifying or corroborating the story told by his anonymous source by interviewing other British officers. You'd think a British reporter would be able to find someone willing to talk to him!
5.) He makes no attempt to contextualize the story with the fact that British troops have been concentrated in the anti-Saddam Shia south all along. American troops, on the other hand, have been concentrated in the Sunni triangle--including Ramadi, Fallujah, and Tikrit--and had always been facing a very different war.
6. The headline uses 'officers' in the plural form, even though only one officer is anonymously attributed as saying anything like that. So the paper's editors are buying into this crap.
If the reporter had done a little more, well, reporting, then one of three things would have happened.
1.) He would have found no one to corroborate the first officer's claim.
2.) He would have found other officers who would flatly contradict the first officer's claim.
3.) He would have found more officers who would corroborate the claim--hopefully on the record.
In the first instance, there's no story.
In the second instance, the story is actually positive.
In the third instance, he would have had a story, but it would look nothing like this piece of trash. It would have been well sourced with reactions from several British officers, and possibly a reaction from the Americans as well.
But in no case would a properly reported article look like this one.
It's a fine example of how not to write a news story!
Where are the Telegraph's guidelines on anonymous sourcing? Don't they tell their reporters that if a source wants to stay off the record, then you'd damn well better be able to verify his story somewhere else?
The Telegraph should have sent this right back to the reporter and told him not to hand in any more copy until he did his $&#*ing job.
I mean, Jayson Blair did better job of reporting when he was plagiarizing from home!
Splash, out
Jason
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