MICHAEL WALSH: The End of Media History and the Last Honest Man.
What can journalism do to repair its tattered reputation? For one thing, it needs to stop responding like this:
A CNN spokesperson previously told POLITICO that the reporters involved in the latest correction, Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb, would not be disciplined. “There will not be any disciplinary action taken because every procedure put in place as part of the editorial process was followed,” the spokesperson said. “People don’t get fired at CNN for making a mistake. They get fired when they don’t follow editorial procedures.”
If that’s its”editorial process,” then CNN has a bigger problem than it thinks. Reporters learned many lessons from Watergate, almost all of them bad, and one of the worst was the “two-source” rule that allowed Woodward and Bernstein to get information into print that wouldn’t have otherwise passed muster.
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