In defense of journalists

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

Fred's comments are a little unfair. True, many journalists are
sloppy or ill informed, but in my experience the majority are smart
professionals who make an honest effort to get their facts straight.
It isn't easy to do justice to an unfamiliar subject when you're
working under deadline -- not many linguists would be able to knock
out 800 words on recent developments in string theory for tomorrow's
early edition. And you could point to some very good coverage of
language issues in the NY Times in particular, for example in
articles by Michael Erard, Margolit Fox, and Nicholas Wade. If these
seem like the exception in the general press, it's partly because
editors tend not to regard language as a reportorial specialty the
way they do other kinds of science writing, and so often assign
language stories to feature writers who come to the subject armed
with no more than the sense they were born with (or more accurately,
the sense they acquired in seventh grade at the business end of
Sister Petra's ruler.)


Geoff Nunberg

>    OT, FOR THE RECORD:  I have never laid a hand on my wife Jennifer Lopez.
>    From the ADS-L ARCHIVES:
>
>On Thu, 6 May 1999, David Bergdahl wrote:
>
>>  Barry is a judge, so he doesn't meet j-school students as we do: clearly
>>  he is overestimating both the intelligence and the training of reporters.
>
>I don't think anyone who has dealt with reporters overestimates their
>intelligence, training, or accuracy.  A couple of weeks ago the New York
>Times printed an article about the origins of the expression "When did you
>stop beating your wife?"  They interviewed me for the article, but
>referred to me throughout the piece as "Fred Siegel."  The reporter later
>told me that she knew someone named Fred Siegel, and her mind just
>conflated the two people.
>
>Given the many inaccuracies one sees in the Times when they write about
>something of which one has personal knowledge, one can only assume that
>all their reporting is riddled with errors.
>
>Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
>Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
>   and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
>Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
>e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2
>
>
>
>(PROQUEST HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS)(New York Times)
>The Ringmaster of Old.
>New York Times (1857-Current file). New York, N.Y.: Oct 27, 1901. p.
>SM18 (1 page) :
>(Same article as in APS ONLINE in 1902.  Both are from THE CORNHILL--ed.)
>
>
>(AMERICAN PERIODICAL SERIES)
>THE CIRCUS.; THE LAMENT OF A PURE MIND.
>E V Lucas. Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature (1901-1907). New
>York: Jan 1902. Vol. 138, Iss. 1; p. 92 (6 pages)
>Pg. 93:  The first question was anything; the second question was
>anything; but the third, propounded by the clown after long
>self-communing, was steeped in guile: "Do you _still_ beat your
>wife?"  There is no way out of that; affirmative and negative alike
>are powerless to rob the "still" of its sting; and off goes the
>clown with his bottle of wine, crack goes the whip, round ambles the
>old white horse with a back like Table Mountain, and the Signortna
>resumes her pretty capers.
>
>
>(PROQUEST HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS)(Wall Street Journal)
>MR. BRYAN'S TRICK QUESTIONS.
>Wall Street Journal (1889-Current file). New York, N.Y.: Jul 20,
>1911. p. 1 (1 page) :
>    Perhaps Mr. Bryan would like to answer one or two questions
>framed after the "Do you still beat your wife?" model, bearing upon
>his own financial past?
>
>
>(PROQUEST HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS)(New York Times)
>On Council's Budget List: More Funds to Sue Mayor; City Hall Notes
>By ABBY GOODNOUGH. New York Times (1857-Current file). New York,
>N.Y.: Apr 24, 1999. p. B2 (1 page) :
>    The Mayor was partly right, said Fred Siegel, a Yale University
>librarian and editor of the Oxford Dictionary of American Legal
>Quotations.  The Police Commissioner was indeed referring to a type
>of logical fallacy that was "written about by Aristotle," Mr. Siegel
>said.
>    But he added that the actual wife-beating question could be
>traced not to ancient Greece, but to "Legal Laughs: A Joke for Every
>Jury," a 1914 book by Gus C. Edwards.
>    In the book, Mr. Siegel said, the joke goes as follows: A
>browbeating lawyer was demanding that a witness answer a certain
>question either in the negative of affirmative.
>    "I cannot do it," the witness said.  "There are some questions
>that cannot be answered by a 'yes' or a 'no,' as anyone knows."
>    "I defy you to give an example to the court," thundered the
>lawyer.  The retort came like a flash: "Are you still beating your
>wife?"
>    A sickly grin spread over the lawyer's face and he sat down.