In defense of journalists

[Fred Shapiro]

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Geoffrey Nunberg wrote:

> 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

Much of my experience with journalists is with major national newspapers,
particularly the New York Times, but I have also dealt with smaller
papers.  I find that the biggest problems are with the major national
newspapers, particularly the New York Times.  I have dealt with some
really smart, insightful journalists at the Times, but also with some who
were very difficult.  I think the reason why major national newspapers,
particularly the Times, can be difficult to deal with is that they are
much more arrogant than journalists at smaller papers, much more likely to
think they know more than the subject of the article does.  As for the
Times having all kinds of fact checkers and copy editors, this may
actually foster errors because the fact checkers and copy editors are
misguidedly convinced they know best.  Even William Safire, the paper's
language maven, has to have his linguistic assertions edited by others who
may know a lot less than him about the point in question.

Fred Shapiro


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------