Academic

LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS FAIL AGAIN: Fake story meant to ensnare bloggers catches NYT in?

By Glenn Reynolds

LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS FAIL AGAIN: Fake story meant to ensnare bloggers catches NYT instead.

More from Gawker. Here’s the prankster’s account.

The basic idea was this: A bunch of law bloggers would try to punk the political bloggers, whose reputation is to grab any old rumor and run with it. Fact checking hasn’t always been the strong suit of this community.

But the political bloggers, to their collective credit, didn’t bite, despite wide dissemination of the story. Not on the right or the left. Instead it was the vaunted New York Times that ran with the story without bothering to check its facts. The Times, of course, had no sense of humor about it when the angry phone call came to me a couple of hours later.

Heh. Well, anybody can be fooled, but the Big Media folks sure pull a lot of attitude.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on April 05, 2010 (boomark / email).