A text-to-self connection with Baron ch. 9 :)

On page 199 of Always On, Naomi Baron retells a short story about an internet company that singularly determined that readers now have to be responsible for the accuracy of stories, not the internet journalists who compose them. The justification from the official was that internet journalists have to "work very fast."

About a year ago, I noticed an error in something that was on the front page of the Yahoo! site. Normally, I don't bother correcting errors that I catch in someone else's print, but this was a big mistake, so I responded by using a 'questions/comments' link on the same page (I can't recall what the error was, though - wish I could).

The message I received back was similar to the response of the official in Baron's story. "We repost news items and stories that we get from other sources so it's not our problem" was the gist of it. Apparently, Yahoo! is fine with mediating inaccurate content. I imagine many other internet sites, including newspaper sites, are just as guilty of using content without checking the accuracy.

A month or two after that, I noticed another error on the same site. I didn't bother reporting the error because I'd learned valuable lessons the first time around:
1) Yahoo! is not interested in disseminating accurate information
2) Yahoo! doesn't care to report they posted inaccurate information from another source
3) Yahoo! doesn't care to correct their inaccurate information from another source
3) I don't trust anything I read on Yahoo! to necessarily be accurate

I probably should substitute 'all internet sites' for Yahoo! in my lessons, but I'll give each a shot to retract and apologize for a news item that was posted inaccurately. I recognize that 'internet journalists' have to work fast and that sometimes mistakes will be made. Just don't call yourself a journalist if you're not willing to correct those mistakes.