Not to pick on The Atlantic but they had a blog on their site yesterday that a number people posted on Facebook that was kind of jaw dropping. The article in question was Megan McArdle's piece about the birth of a fake quotation. In it, she discussed how Facebook and Twitter helped a false MLK quotation become maintream in mere minutes. But there were two glaring problems with the piece. First off, the article was a piece about a problem with quickly disseminated information yet when it came time to do some research for her own piece, McArdle wrote that she did "a quick Google search." I wasn't sure if it was hypocritical or ironic that her response to a questionable fast-spreading quote was to do a questionable quick search. Secondly, McArdle's hasty "research" also failed to research from where the quote sprang.
What happened was a young lady wrote her own thought, "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy" and followed it with an MLK quote. Then someone mistakenly moved the quotation marks and included the young lady's own thoughts as part of the MLK quote. And finally someone else just deleted the actual MLK quote part of it and posted the young lady's original thought as MLK's words. That is what McArdle saw on her Twitter feed. And that's the quote that McArdle questioned.

What happened then is something that is all too common in modern media and modern communication - someone made a hasty comment and that was followed by equally hasty response and then most people just ended up arguing about the quotes, both real and false, along with McArdle's accusations. I credit McArdle for later writing up a longer piece that fully explained the birth of the fake quote but why didn't she do that to begin with? Her response was less a real look at fake quotes and more of a humble defense of her earlier post. And while I'm sure she could give the "It's just a blog post; just my opinion", the problem is that when that opinion comes from The Atlantic, people are going to take it as more than just opinion. People posted her original piece as if it was a clear dismissal of the quote. The proliferation of blogs on sites of major mags shouldn't be that responsibility or quality of journalism should diminish.

We live in a FIRST! society where people would rather risk not being right if it means not being first. McArdle could have waited to post her story but it wouldn't have been as topical. I've written before how I'd love to start a news show/site called "Yesterday's News" where the anchors/writers can step back from the initial run of a story and truly examine it (and also examine the way the story was covered and how it was shaped.) I believe this type of show or site, which would probably focus on one or two stories a day so it could have a legit in-depth look would be amazing because it could get to the truth or acknowledge the debates at the core of the news. It also could show how the news teams are spinning each story to fit their own agendas or worldview (or just stumbling over the truth in their haste to get the story out there.)

Obviously, EVERY station should do that before running a story but that's gone now. Journalism has become a race in which everyone is consumed. It seems like very few people in the news realize that immediacy is often the enemy of quality. Megan McArdle could have taken the MLK mistake and crafted a very interesting article on how fake news spreads like wildfire but instead she just became part of the problem. She spit out a blog post that required an update and then a separate post to explain what the heck happened. It seems that McArdle wanted to get ahead of the debunking curve rather than get the debunking right.

It all goes back to the age old adage about the three elements of work, "There's three options: cheap, fast, and good - you can only choose two of them." Now, the meaning of the quote is to say that if you want something fast and good, it won't be cheap. Or cheap and good, it won't be fast. But in today's media landscape, it seems all too many people are gladly opting for fast and cheap and not caring if it's all that good.
(Mind you, this isn't to say that McArdle isn't a good writer overall, but in this one case, she put the cart before the horse and while she was clarifying her earlier, quick remarks, she watched an intriguing article ride on by.)

And, of course, I have to acknowledge my own hypocrisy since this entire site is blogs written in spare time and just kind of jotted down but, then again, I'm just throwing out a random blog and I'm not passing myself off as a journalist working for an esteemed publication.