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Comment by jimmy1 | Hacker News Reader

For numerous others in recent times see the coverage of the Covington Catholic situation: misreporting and sensationalism at it's finest. I wonder sometimes if some of these traditional media behemoths even bother to follow basic journalistic practices like

1. cross referencing your sources 2. seeking the other side of the story / opposing viewpoints 3. asking those involved for comment

because it seems glaringly obvious to me in the Covington Catholic case, none of that was done until 48 hours when some high profile twitter names started actually pointing out the glaring errors.

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The push to always be breaking news and the drive for ever more customers is certainly seriously problematic.

And I certainly won't say the NYT is perfect. But it seems a bit much to claim the NYT has so many errors that it is unreadable or reality free. And it is certainly better than the vast majority of alternatives.

After all, in the very case you mentioned, they did print this[1] almost immediately. And the problem in this case comes far more from the "like" button and yet more twitter storms than it does news papers. Papers which attract vastly fewer eyeballs, have far fewer curse words and require attention spans greater than a chipmunk.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/us/nathan-phillips-coving...

Unfortunately this happens a lot but I don't entirely blame the media companies. In the age of twitter and social media, some news moves fast and they have to decide quickly whether to publish something about a trending news item or wait to do proper reportage and lose valuable page-views to more sensationalistic outlets which they have to compete with. I've come to accept this is the new reality and not get too bummed about it as long as we still occasionally get the usual well reported long-form investigative pieces we're used to and that you only get from these outlets

It's difficult to trust the reporting of an organization that misrepresents or gets wrong an event that is entirely recorded on video from many angles. I agree that the New York Times publishes some great articles, but I'm deeply concerned about the bad articles they publish.

If their editorial standards permit them to rush to judgment as they did in the Catholic school incident how can I trust their editorial standards in more nuanced areas where I don't get to see the full story on video for myself?

I don't think their original piece actually made a judgment, it just reported what everyone else initially thought was the case (correct me if I'm wrong ). Still I agree it's disappointing that they a news organization takes what you see on the internet at face value, like the rest of us

I disagree. The original article described the children as surrounding or mobbing the elder, quoted people who described the scene as "horrific", quoted numerous people condemning the event, and connected it to racism. They didn't offer a conflicting perspective at all, creating the illusion there was universal condemnation of the apparently horrific action of the boys.

I think this particular instance is minor, though unfortunate for the unfairly maligned children. What really worries me is just the judgment of the paper. They should've known they didn't have the whole story and that the whole story would be available on video. Why not wait until you knew the relevant information? I can understand people making mistakes, this scenario just seems so simple and obvious though and I can't believe they botched it. It makes me worried - how can I trust them to handle complicated issues?

So here's a great example of where Talking Points Memo gets to the truth and why we all should read it.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/making-sense-of-the-phi...

Over the last couple days I’ve been watching the unfolding reaction and re-reactions to the video of the confrontation between Native American activist and elder Nathan Phillips and a crowd of high school students from Covington, Kentucky on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. The whole story is a good example of how we can react quickly to a zoomed in (both literally and metaphorically) video and miss a lot of what led up to it, as well as some key context. With that said, though, when you add all the context I’m not sure it’s all that different from what it looked like on the first go, despite some now saying the new evidence and new videos change everything.

Saturday night and into Sunday I watched numerous different videos of the encounter itself and what led up to it. So let me give you my impression of what happened as well as links to videos and accounts which can help you come to your own conclusions.

First, the initial videos could easily give the impression that Phillips (the man with the drum) was in the midst of marching in a protest when he was surrounded by a crowd of white teenagers in MAGA hats. That’s not what happened.

(Be very careful of the takes from rightwing, billionaire-funded/owned publications like the Daily Caller, Reason, WSJ, IJR, Fox News, Drudge, or anyone on rightwing radio: they have a political reason to play down racism from a white kid wearing a MAGA hat.)

This story perfectly illustrates the deep-seated bias which is fatally imbuing this “analysis”.

The initial account was nothing less than a setup. The derisive referral to boys in “MAGA hats”, the utter speculation about what a boy was feeling to fit a narrative in direct conflict with the boys own statement, the over-generalizing “they were all doing tomahawk chops”, and on and on. This is a tortured attempt at ass-covering.

Most glaringly, failing to directly call out the utter lies told by Phillips (a professional protestor and agitator) to the press, which entirely discredits him, the adult in this situation, who was in fact an instigator.

The NYT followup piece [1] on this incident was actually significantly more fair. But it still doesn’t excuse getting it wrong the first time.

What’s beautiful is anyone can watch the full uncut zoomed out videos and see for themselves. This second-hand “analysis” is toxic to the truth, which is just a click on YouTube away.

Compare and contrast the TalkingPointsMemo piece with this one [2] — which I don’t know anything about that site, but the author seems to be a lot more clear headed about what seems to have happened. What I read there was someone describing what they learned from watching the full 1 hour 40 minute video showing what really happened. [3]

In short it’s been an absolute banner week for “Fake News” and you would certainly hope this would provoke some soul searching from the so-called journalists responsible for this.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/us/nathan-phillips-coving...

[2] - https://reason.com/blog/2019/01/20/covington-catholic-nathan...

[3] - https://youtu.be/3-pFMZaw5f0

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