Tim Almond

From The Guardian

Kohnstamm’s story (about Lonely Planet) went everywhere because it challenged the belief that reference books, reports in serious newspapers, magazines, academic papers and journals are the result of a reliable process which produces accurate results.

The result of a reliable process which produces accurate results? Maybe that’s the standard that Nick Cohen sets himself, but there are plenty of journalists who put story before fact. They’ll find a crank report that’s not been peer reviewed and run a whole story around it.

For all the talk of the net changing the world, it remains a parasitic medium which depends on old-fashioned sources, which readers could more or less trust.

If readers could more or less trust them, this wouldn’t happen. It’s only that so much journalism is lazy that makes criticising it so easy. Finding a factual error or poor analysis on CiF is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Tags: Politics //