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Unprofessional, dishonest editing of a TPM report
When this TPM post about VoteBoth's numbers was initially posted, it included this line:
Those are very good numbers, it can't be denied. The group yesterday
announced that former Hillary adviser Lanny Davis had joined the effort.
I'm not against the editorializing inherent in "it can't be denied;" this is a blog, for heaven's sake. I am against the fact that no more than an hour later that line (which I placed in bold type) was quietly removed, with no record of it ever having existed, and a "Late Update" was added that included this:
25,000 signatures on a petition is really not that impressive.
It took an hour to discover that, yet at first the reporter thought (independent of any investigation whatsoever, it seems) the number was undeniably large.
Keeping a record of what a post said from the beginning using strikeout text or footnotes allows the readers here to evaluate the bias and the integrity of the individual reporters. Not including that record and trying to hide it with sneaky edits is fundamentally dishonest in a news organization.
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Comments (15)
That's the least of it here at TPM. I believe editing of posts and reports without note happens from time to time. But posts and whole threads get removed, often with dozens or hundreds of comments erased. I believe MJ has removed three of his posts in the last couple of months without comment. My questions to TPM management about this practice have been ignored. Yes, these practices are dishonest of a news organization as well as a blog.
June 6, 2008 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is this mentioned in their TOS? If you do not know, you should find out.
June 6, 2008 6:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is not true. If you're the one who's asked about the issue with MJ's post, you haven't been ignored. We've been very clear that we've never taken down one of MJ's posts. If one's have disappeared it's been a matter of a technical glitch, not editing on the staff's part.
June 6, 2008 6:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
My apologies then. I did ask Andrew about deleted posts on several occasions in threads and emailed him once but never received an answer. The reasons I initially thought that MJ had removed his own posts were twofold. The first one that I questioned disappeared shortly after another post of his had been edited after many comments were made (that is, MJ went back after some criticisms and pretty much changed the character of what he had originally written). The other reason I assumed that was, before the site change, MJ was repeatedly asked about removing a post (I believe it contained some slights aimed at Russian Jews) and I never saw a denial from him about removing it. Also, I have not been able to access archives (my own or anyone's). If it 's all due to technical glitches, I stand corrected (wiping the egg off).
June 6, 2008 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now that you've mentioned it, I'm going to sit down with Andrew and give it another look and try to see if we can get to the bottom of what happened. But I assure you, no one on the staff has ever knowingly taken down a Coffee House post, though we occasionally take down individually comments for violating the TOS -- foul language, hate speech, etc. In any case, we'll give it a look and report back. All I would ask is that on these various different grounds, I'd ask people at least assume things are errors until we have a chance to answer/explain. Most of the issues like this are either misunderstandings or problems caused by our staff being stretched thin. Josh
June 6, 2008 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks. Again, I'm sorry if I jumped to conclusions without foundation.
June 6, 2008 10:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
This might be helpful.
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Also, I do recall that when you had the old software, M.J. Rosenberg more than once deleted entire threads. When we could track we could see when he did that, the links to our comments would still be on our own lists but it would take us to an error page after deletion.
And one time he admitted it straight out, in a reply to a comment, when someone asked in the comments where the thread had gone that they had been on the day before, I recall that he basically said he deleted it because he didn't like how the discussion turned out, that he was enabled to do so, and that until management here told him he couldn't, he was going to exercise that prerogative when he felt it appropriate. You can probably still find that comment in your trial archive.
He does edit after posting without notation, I have seen this more than a few times, while I was on the site refreshing one of his posts or returning to see new comments. I saw him change the title and the introductory paragraph of one in the last few weeks.
June 7, 2008 2:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
P.S. Sorry to not be able to offer any links on the 2nd half of the comment; if you had a more accessible archive I would spend some time trying to do so.
I only mention the editing after posting because it is the topic of this thread. I myself am not sure how I feel about that as to contributors blogging on TPMCafe. After all, readers and commenters are asking for an edit function back so they can correct or refine what they say, it's sort of hypocritical to be saying that contributors shouldn't being doing that. Of course, a scholarly person who cares about such things will note that they have changed their posting, and someone who wants to play "gotcha" will try to capture a quote of something inflammatory before someone changes their mind and edits it.
BTW, I always thought the Simple Machines software practice of allowing people to edit but noting every edit with an automatic time stamp and note was the best solution for this for the nature of blogging. Then if people want to do a "j'accuse" about something they saw disappear there is evidence of a change, and this makes many posters explain and note their edits pre-emptively.
June 7, 2008 2:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh jeez. I'm bitching louder than anyone, but I'm just happy to see they go back and fix some of their silliness every so often. I take back a fraction of a percent of the mean things I've said. :)
Strikeout would be cool - although usually, I'd probably view it as an "alright already, STFU!!!" more than some sort of integrity meter.
June 6, 2008 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
The post mentioned in this post was from Greg Sargent. You're surprised? I would like to know how 25,000 signatures out of the 18 million votes she touts are considered a significant amount. I guess Greg must have thought about it and had a V-8 moment.
In the words of Emily Latella...nevermind....
June 6, 2008 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Greg is guilty of pointless editorializing more than actual bias. He did the same thing in a pro-Obama way recently and people actually liked it, one commenter saying something like, "This is the first time I've agreed with you 100%."
My own feeling is that if these are news items, I'd rather get the information straight up, without editorializing either way ("very good numbers" or then "not impressive"). I guess all of us, hearing the number, can decide for ourselves if we're impressed or not.
June 7, 2008 1:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
The way the edit function worked at the OLD TPM was that you could edit unless and until someone responded; then you couldn't do it.
That seems fair, because for example if someone refuted a statement and then you just went in and took it out it would be a dishonest way to post.
It does seem that using a strikeout, or some other way to indicate editing after someone has commented would also work.
But who is listening?
June 7, 2008 7:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I had raised a question (regarding Rosenberg's deletion of a post and comments) directly with TPM staff by email and to Rosenberg directly and have never received an answer. My earlier post regarding the deleted May 28th post was listed above by artappraiser on June 7th at 2:04AM. It would be nice to get an answer. I can't believe it was a technical glitch, but then, I believed Colin Powell as well.
June 7, 2008 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why should I care if Greg thinks that 25,000 signatures are very good numbers or, if he changes his mind at some point and finds it really not that impressive? He never changed a fact, just his own interpretation. You could give him the benefit of the doubt; maybe he saw new info that suggested 25K wasn't a whole lot signatures for a petition of that sort. Whatever.
At the end of the day, as long as the facts are straight, it's up to us as media consumers (and humans more broadly) to understand that everyone's interpretation is "biased" by their own life experience and perspective and to scrutinize accordingly.
June 7, 2008 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is a larger issue here. TPM apparently does not have a policy on how even factual corrections or edits are disclosed.
For instance, about a year ago, Steve Bennen misread and misreported a news item about the massacre of twenty or so people who worked in the Baghdad market that McCain had visited and famously praised as being safe the previous day - the massacre actually took place outside Baghdad, the victims were pulled off a bus and murdered - but Bennen initially reported that the massacre had taken place in the market itself.
Sometime later, after being notified by readers of the error, he did change the story, but there is no indication in the story that an edit was made. There is no list of corrections anywhere on the web site either. I suspect the vast majority of readers who read the initial version of the story never knew that a correction had been made and thus were let with an entirely different picture of the events.
That is just one example that springs to mind.
I will say that Josh seems to hold himself to a higher standard in notifying readers of corrections- using "update" or some such to add new information to his posts. But the Muckraker and EC sections really need a policy of how to notify readers of significant, and in particular of factual, corrections and late edits to posts.
Salon.com seems to have a good policy for corrections and late edits - disclosure in at least general terms appended to the article itself (this Josh does for his own posts), and a central list of corrections that readers can access. I wish TPM would adopt a similar site-wide policy.
It's a matter of credibility.
(And, yeah, advocating for a edit and corrections policy is how I became known as NitPicker2.)
June 7, 2008 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
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