CJR column: Glass Houses
My weekly Columbia Journalism Review online column takes a look at the pitfalls of reporting about other people’s mistakes. An excerpt is below. The full column archive is here.
Glass Houses
It’s not recognized as one of the fundamentals of the profession, but journalists spend a lot of time pointing out other people’s mistakes.
Major news over the past few weeks has included Cabinet nominees that erred in their tax filings, a famous baseball player who took performance enhancing drugs, and an Olympic champion who inhaled performance inhibiting drugs.
Journalists spend a lot of time holding public officials and institutions accountable for their actions. That inevitably means we spend time on the mistake beat: who made them, why they made them, and whether or not they offered an appropriate apology.
It’s important work, but it also leaves the press open to accusations of hypocrisy when it does a poor job of admitting and correcting its own mistakes …
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