As anyone who’s dealt with the mainstream media knows, any time you’re directly involved in a story, you’re likely to see that it’s been misreported.
I was interviewed recently about the economic problems facing the new government and said, several times, that we would be better off if both parties had not committed themselves to large tax cuts on the basis of optimistic projections but that, having made the commitment, the Rudd government should honour it. This is how it came out in the news.com story
Some economists believe the promised $31 billion tax cuts should be abandoned.
“The country would be much better if we hadn’t had these tax-cut promises from both sides in the election campaign,” University of Queensland professor John Quiggin said.
“It was irresponsible to promise such large tax cuts where the fiscal situation needed more flexibility than that allowed.”
But Mr Swan insisted the tax cuts would be delivered.
You could argue that the report is accurate. Some economists do believe the tax cuts should be abandoned and I did make the remarks quoted. Perhaps the reporter submitted a story in which these two facts weren’t run together as they have been here, and it was cut in a way that produced this misleading impression. Or maybe the original report was wrong.
Either way, it confirms negative impressions about the mainstream media. Of course, bloggers make plenty of mistakes too, but it would be nice to think the professionals could do better.
Update I got a phone call this morning from news.com.au and I’m happy to say the story has been rewritten with my views reported correctly. Blogging gets results!
John Quiggin 
That kind of selective quoting is prevarication, which, look it up is lying
Commiserations John. I recently had a news story run where they did a typo on a flood peak figure passing over a spillway. Instead of my 12 cubic metres of water per second they ran 120. Try as I might they just did not seem to think it needed some form of correction. Meanwhile I’m left holding the ‘alarmist’ tag.
As I hinted, Eli, I’m willing to believe it’s more in the nature of a stuffup than a deliberate misrepresentation. They could have found someone to quote who does think the tax cuts should be abandoned, which is what they wanted, I think.
professionals could do better.
Their ‘profession’ is simply delivering audiences to advertisers and has naught to do with honest information.
The media seem to have been pretty gentle in mincing your position John. In relation to the 2007 election campaign the LDP encountered some journalists who simply made stuff up and didn’t even ask for a quote to work with. One journo inferred that the reason the LDP abbreviated our party name on the ballot was to disguise the fact that we were in favour of euthanasia. If he had bothered to ask anybody at the LDP he would have found out that the abbreviation was due to an error in filling in one of obscure AECs forms (an issue that effected the Australian Democrats also) and that given half a chance we would have wanted the AEC to correct that error and present our full unabreviated name. We would also have been exeptionally pleased if the AEC had told every single voter that the LDP were in favour of legalising euthanasia.
http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/article/2007/11/27/9242_opinion.html
I won’t repeat some of the extremely disgusting and seriously libelous crap that some other journalists invented out of thin air. Mostly because these incidents were confined to regional papers and I don’t wish to give oxygen to the more ugly lies.
Some years ago, the Age published an item claiming that John Howard agreed that the monarchy was an anachronism. I emailed them about it, pointing out that he had not done so. They emailed back, giving a reference to one of their own earlier articles quoting him. But when I pointed out that they had cut words saying “some people think that”, which the Australian had in its own transcript – why, apology or indeed any kind of reply came there none. Deafening silence. And considering that the first error had been pointed out at the time, the repeated distortion was all the more egregious.
My god! Taken out of context by the media!
You’ll be discovering steam next JQ.
Frankly, I think you’d be far better off starting your own blog so your observations go out in untramelled detail first. Or and also perhaps joining some well respected group blog as well.
Hey, I’m just throwing these ideas out there. Use them, not use them.
PS: You been invited to Rudd’s 1000 corrobbee? If not, then you should be.
Its not that bad really. I can see it gives that impression, but I think really its just they were moving the story along from your quote to Swan’s quote.
you did well, mr q- they actually used your words. be humble, your words are there to fill the space between ads or promote ideas of editors or proprietors.
Misquote. My experience is that they have already decided the slant they want to put on the story. If you agree with it, you may be lucky enough to get quoted correctly, if they can work what you say into something that seems to agree, they’ll misquote you, and if they can’t twist it to fit, they’ll leave it out. They’ve passed their undergraduate assignments doing much the same thing.
While politeness would suggest giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming that it was poor editing, we all know that it was much more likely to be a misquote.
I have also noticed that any time that you’re directly involved in a story, you will probably see that its been misreported. Most readers would prefer media that it accurate, but the media constantly gets it wrong. Is this a market failure? Sounds like one to me.
Most readers would *prefer* media that is accurate, but obviously that’s not the primary criteria they use for choosing which media to purchase. The accuracy rate of media is at level the market tolerates it. Were it substantially lower, enough people would take issue with it that profits would be affected. OTOH, the cost of raising the accuracy isn’t justified by any potential gain in profits (especially because accuracy that makes your advertisers looks bad can negatively affect profits). And plenty of people don’t really want to hear the truth, when it comes down to it.
Given that we now have so much freely available alternative media online, it’s arguably a much less serious problem than it was in the past. The biggest problem is how few people get through the education system without learning how to develop a decent bullshit filter.
My advice, FWIW, is never ever speak to a journalist, on or off the record (a distinction they only reserve for the powerful, in any case). Even then, stories will be made up.
That’s really not too bad in the scale of things. i have seen far far worse.
Research is hard work. Journalists working to a deadline don’t like it. So they cut n paste and use media releases and if that’s too ahrd, jsut make it up.
Did you really say “The country would be much better if …”? Not “The country would be much better off if …”? If the former, I’m surprised that no one has commented on your moral judgement, only on your misinterpreted economic judgement. For what it’s worth, I agree that the country would be slightly less unequal without further tax cuts, and hence in some sense better, but what’s that got to do with fiscal responsibility?
Great to see the update – a successful market intervention! And another nail in the coffin for paper media.
Interesting to hear that you’re quite critical of journalists on this score. My own experience (much more limited than yours, doubtless) has been that at least 90% of the time, I feel I’ve been accurately quoted.