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The story, though, is not that it's been done, but that it's been claimed to have been done.Originally Posted by Mblaster
If this were just a case of a wild claim on a single forum, it wouldn't be a story, but when it's been giving some official credibility by the authorities making statements on it, then it's a story. But at this point, it's a story that a claim has been made and is being taken seriously enough to be investigated by the authorities, who are also saying they have no evidence that there is any truth in it. Of course, if they haven't checked yet, presumably there's no evidence that there isn't anything to it, either.
Nor is the article (in the Telegraph) based on a single source. It's based on, for example, :-
- the claim itself
- the arrest by the police, allegedly linked to it
- a statement from the Office of National Statistics that they are investigating
- the comment from the prime IT contractor (Lockheed Martin) that they are preparing a statement.
However you cut it, journalistically, this is a story, even if it's a story, at the moment, about claims that the Census has been hacked, not that it has been.
The requirement on journalists (or rather, responsible ones, not the "Freddie Starr ate my hamster" or "Martians invade Peckham" variety who are not, in my view, journalists at all) is to fact-check. It's the responsibility for a couple of reasons. First, to not mislead readers with inaccurate claims offact. Second, because getting that wrong can have unpleasant legal consequences for both journalist and publisher.
But what are the facts in this story?
1) A claim has been made.
2) The police arrested an alleged hacker
3) The ONS are investigating
4) LM are preparing a statement ... and so on.
Is there any suggestion that these facts are incorrect? And even if they are, the responsibility only goes so far, because often, you can only check facts so far, and not to the point of absolute certainty. If, for instance, and ONS press officer says "we're investigating" it's not incumbent on the journalist to ensure they actually are doing so before publishing in the story that they said they are, because they did say they are.
There is, therefore, an element of latitude in this, and it's a judgement call as to when to publish and when not to.
Another factor would be the predictable effects of publishing weighed against the level of checking possible. It would, for instance, be highly irresponsible to publish a story that Al Qaeda have hidden a suitcase nuke in the centre of London, and are going to detonate it in 60 minutes, because if coming from an even half-way credible source, it would likely cause panic, and probably result in injury of even deaths in the resultant scramble. The consequences of mere publication could have serious results.
On the other hand, publishing a story of a claimed hack has no such consequences, so the results are trivial. And in-between, publication of allegations of, say, criminal activity by a public official may be very much in the public's interest, because it probably forces a public acknowledgement of the accusation by the authorities, and forces an investigation where otherwise none may happen, and even forces a reaction that otherwise may have been swept under the carpet. An example of that might well be the Telegraph's publication of MPs actual expense claims, not the highly limited and sanitised versions the authorities wanted to release, after they'd been thoroughly neutralised. Would we have had the expenses scandal, and the clean-up (such as it is) without that Telegraph expose? I don't think so.
It is, therefore, always a complex call, albeit that this particular example is a trivial illustration of it. There are potential safety impacts, there are potential legal impacts, and there's the national interest.
And, of course, there's also an commercial element. In can never be forgotten that scoops sell papers, or drive net traffic, and most news organisations are, like it or not, profit-making bodies.
But before you condemn the profit motive too quickly, think about it. What is the alternative? A government-funded news agency with sole responsibility for deciding what we can and can't know about? Would the MP's expenses story have got past it's editor? Would it hell.
Journalism, and I mean real journalism, is expensive. Even if you take a small outfit like HEXUS, staff still expect to get paid. After all, they have to eat, pay rent/mortgage and buy clothes for the kids, etc. How much more so the Telegraph? Or the BBC? It costs real, serious money in very large quantities to acquire stories, to vet and research and verify them, and finally but not least, write them up. If the profit incentive is not going to fund all this, just what is?
So yes, newspapers and websites are going to write stories in ways that, hopefully, sell copies and generate traffic. Not only should you not expect anything else, but it really wouldn't be in our (the public's) interest were it not the case.
So .... you just have to decide how much flavour you want in your poison? Every paper has an angle, a style. Some are far more sensationalist than others. But ALL are trying to stay afloat in a climate of very hard times, not just because of the economy, but because there are huge pressures on papers, not least from free (and far cheaper to run) websites. Commercial pressures, and an element of salesmanship in headlines, in utterly unavoidable. It's a reality of business life.
But it's not just that, in relation to headline writing. They have to be written in such a way as to grab attention, in a way that people can take in the content at a glance, because that's all most of us do with headlines .... glance. If you are too pedantic in how you word it, you lose the ability to convey that snap impression that gets people to read, or click. An extra couple of words can make all the difference. Hence the tradition for quotes, which in translation means "it's been said/claimed that ....".
We're not discussing the correct grammatical use of quotation marks, but the use of quotes in a headline - where there is no room to provide a source - to use a phrase uttered by anyone they like to make a sensational, factual sounding newsbit. Grammatically correct or not, it's a cop-out.
