Story or Rumor Mongering?: separating Fact from Fiction
August 26, 2010 at 12:51 am Leave a comment
Does the story add up? Do sources and facts check out and hold up under scrutiny? How about the proverbial “smell test” or similar “gut check”? Beyond getting the facts straight, spelling the names right, a journalist covering a story must try to see through the fluff, the vested interests, and the image-making publicity machine.
Always lurking in every potential news story is a world of half-truths, lies, and innuendoes, with likely instances of any number of agendas and axes to grind. There’s the self-serving; the self-promoting; the muck-raking; the huckstering; the posturing; and the self-righteous—there’s the gossip; the misinformation; the bias and bluster; the spin, and the gloss-over. The “offficial statements” by the “official spkesperson”; the partisan and the interest groups, the lobbyists, propagandists of every hue, color and stripe who vy to control the message, color the facts and try to manage the public perception.
Be preparred for the special causes, the noble claims, the positions, the promotions, the pitches. Watch for the insidious ever so subtley-folded little fibbs, slight exagerations and obscurred obfuscations that come in ready slick and loaded sound-bites, B-roll, P.R kits, news releases, honed, fine-tuned, poll-tested, soap-box readied, rehearsed and pumped with every form of sincereity to sound as fresh, innocent, “grass roots” truthful, matter-of-fact, disiterested, unencumbered, friendly, confidant, observer, tipster, expert…oh, take your pick.
And politicians and their ilk are also an inscrutable lot: with a rapacious desire for publicity, influence and power, they are always ready to peddle a position, side-step an unpopular point-of view, or attack an opponent with what they call the “the truth.”
Yes, it’s especially hard on any given day to identify who’s trying to put one over on you or who’s telling the truth.
Truth is never “self-evident” in journalism. One must always seek; challenge; verify; test for accuracy, context, clarity, and transparency and constantly vet the reliability of all sources.
Question: How to dredge the swamp to get to the “truth” and the real story?
And, if not truth…then in the words of comedian Stephen Colbert, maybe just to settle for “truthiness”.
Here is a little help…a Washington Post reporter created a clever filter or hierarchy of truth for looking at early issues of the 2008 US election campaign.
The Journalist’s truth test as explained in the Washington Post.com story “Two Canadian Diplomats, One Evasion by Obama”
Tuesday, March 4, 2008; Page A09
“ONE PINOCCHIO: Some shading of the facts. TWO PINOCCHIOS: Significant omissions or exaggerations. THREE PINOCCHIOS: Significant factual errors. FOUR PINOCCHIOS: Real whoppers. THE GEPPETTO CHECK MARK: Statements and claims contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
Check out his analysis of the political issues from the past election cycle:
Also you can double check the facts and controversies at:
Find Political contribution information at:
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press analyses media coverage:
And if you want to shatter urban myths, rumour, scams and sensational internet fear-story hoaxes:
Find a collection of public documents, legal filings, arrest records, police mug shots, FBI reports on current crimes, celebrities, politicians in the news.
Entry filed under: Journalism, News & Views.
Creative Control International Inc. 
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