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Since this appears to be the only place where Tiger Woods' name has not (yet) appeared, let's fix that.
Oh, I don't care about Woods and his peccadillos. In fact I thought a peccadillo was either some little musical instrument about the size of a Slim Jim, or an obnoxious western-state pig whose only claim to fame was that it could (or would) climb up a cactus.
Well, in the midst of all that Woodsian blather, one golfing magazine sent a reporter (or so he claimed to be) to some event. this person wrote that he had talked to two golfers and they had expressed themselves—in rather colorful language—about Tiger Woods. He wrote this all down and included it in the article.
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 wild peccaries
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But there was a slight problem. the two golfers in question both said they had never seen this guy and had never spoken to him and would never have said any such things about Woods.
Oops moment around the old editorial restroom. When the editor asked the journalist to explain, the man said that he didn't actually know the golfers but that they had said that they were Joe and Bob or whatever, and he took them at their word. It now became obvious that he had been the victim of a practical joke by two other guys entirely. And this was now in print, as in, not to be changed by the web editor any time soon.
The editor now issued a statement. He said he had sent "an experienced journalist" to the golf event but that the urnalist was just a freelancer and so not a member of the magazine staff. the implication was that this was not the magazine's fault because some amateur who was not sufficiently on the ball, dropped the ball.
(Odd that they, in one statement, referred to the "experienced journalist" and then trashed him as "only a freelancer." I'm paraphrasing a bit here.)
Now we nerdy journalist types (we make Trekkies look like sophisticated international jet-setters and they even dress better) all around the country fell to cussing and discussing this event. To me, this incident points out the difference between magazines and newspaper journalism. I've done both which makes me the world's leading expert. Journalism relies (or did, things are going to hell in a handbasket at the moment) on trained journalists following some rigid rules. Magazines take people of vastly different skills and backgrounds and hope for the best with a lot of oversight.
I was trained by Reuters and would [I]never[/I] have just scribbled down something without knowing to whom I was speaking. I would have asked for a driver's license. Today, I might have photographed it with my cell phone. If the problem arises because the freelancer stood around with flapping ears and listened in on conversations between golfers who did not realize a reporter was even present, that's 'sandbagging' and verboten. It could, though, explain the reaction of the golfers who denied even giving any interviews. They didn't; they were just chatting among themselves. They're entitled to do that and it's not on the record.
If the problem is that the real golfers knew they were speaking to a reporter but then changed their minds and decided to deny it all, then the reporter is in the right, though not being able to identify the golfers is not helping. But if this is the case the reporter is only [I]lucky[/I] to be right, since he never verified the identities of the people making the statements. Thus, the statements are useless because the reporter cannot prove they were said.
If the problem is that two strangers decided to have some fun and told the reporter a bunch of lies, then the reporter is dead wrong for not figuring that out. And if the reporter just made it all up, I'm only surprised [I]The New York Times[/I] didn't run with the story first.
As for the slimy editor, shoving the blame off on the freelancer is disingenuous. First, magazines use freelancers but are ultimately responsible for what gets printed. If the editor doesn't think a freelancer, or that person's work, meets the magazine's standards, it's the editor's job to do something about that. When things go right and they win some journalism prize, the magazine tries to pretend the freelancer is, well, almost like staff. When things go terribly wrong, they want to say that freelancers are not staff and their (staff's) skirts are still clean. But in this case the simple fact is that the editor looked at what are, on their face, ridiculously outlandish statements and decided to print those without corroboration. And whereas newspapers have the (rather tired) excuse that the news is 'hot' and there may not be time for corroboration, magazines, with long lead times, have no such stress. They have time to get it right.
I'll say, in passing, that ,"We sent an experienced freelancer" may or may not be the whole story. I have been asked, on several occasions, to cover golf events for national golf magazines (two of them). Once, I could sort of understand; I had recently sold that editor a story about golf carts. The other, I don't know where they came up with my name other than I live in Florida, home to a bazillion golf courses. In both cases I explained that I did not play or follow golf. One editor tried to talk me into it anyway. Would I, then, have been 'an experienced freelancer'? Experienced, sure. Experienced at golf ? Not in a million years. |
