HUFFINGTON POST: …. NYU Professor Charles Seife, who conducted the review for Wired, and published his findings separately at Slate, charged Lehrer with “exhibiting reckless disregard for the truth.” More than a dozen Lehrer posts — chosen both by Wired editors and Seife — reportedly contained examples of recycling, press-release plagiarism, outright plagiarism, “issues with quotations” and other factual problems.
While condemning Lehrer, Seife also placed some blame for the affair on the truncated editorial processes of modern-day media outlets.
“Lehrer’s transgressions are inexcusable—but I can’t help but think that the industry he (and I) work for share a some of the blame for his failure. I’m 10 years older than Lehrer, and unlike him, my contemporaries and I had all of our work scrutinized by layers upon layers of editors, top editors, copy editors, fact checkers and even (heaven help us!) subeditors before a single word got published. When we screwed up, there was likely someone to catch it and save us (public) embarrassment. And if someone violated journalistic ethics, it was more likely to be caught early in his career—allowing him the chance either to reform and recover or to slink off to another career without being humiliated on the national stage. No such luck for Lehrer; he rose to the very top in a flash, and despite having his work published by major media companies, he was operating, most of the time, without a safety net. Nobody noticed that something was amiss until it was too late to save him.” … (more)
EDITOR: Especially with Internet journalism, ‘Let the reader beware.’
The advent of audio and video technology distributed via the internet makes internet journalism reporting accuracy easily checked. Something that could not be done before the internet. No longer are we strapped to the cross of information selected by the news networks, or blog writers for that matter. Freedom of speech means lying is not illegal. Hummmm – I wonder if that should be printed on the top of every newspaper page and constantly recirculated on the RSS feeds on television?