I have to chuckle when a debunkers tabloid
prints outright fabrications, and then refuses
to refute the lies after they are exposed.

Now isn't that like your typical debunker;
Twit, Sludge, Patty?

In article <be27hs$d96$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, lisbeth says...

                                FAIR-L
                   Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
              Media analysis, critiques and activism

ACTION ALERT:

U.S. News Won't Retract Fiction Presented as Fact

July 3, 2003

In a June 16 editorial, U.S. News & World Report editor Mort Zuckerman
provided anecdotes to make the point that nowadays "anyone...can
haul anybody into court for just about anything."  But Zuckerman's
facts turned out to be fiction-- and now U.S. News is refusing to
issue a correction.

Zuckerman claimed: "A woman throws a soft drink at her boyfriend
at a restaurant, then slips on the floor she wet and breaks her
tailbone. She sues. Bingo--a jury says the restaurant owes her
$100,000! A woman tries to sneak through a restroom window at a
nightclub to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She falls, knocks
out two front teeth, and sues. A jury awards her $12,000 for dental
expenses."

Zuckerman offered these incidents as proof that society is "rewarding
cynical opportunists" and "punishing innocent people, like the
owners of the restaurant and the nightclub."  But in fact, all they
prove is that U.S. News needs to be more careful in checking its
facts.  As Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz pointed out
in a June 23 column, the spilled drink lawsuit and the nightclub
cheater lawsuit are long-discredited myths.

The myth-debunking website Snopes.com, which Kurtz cited, traces
the bogus lawsuit anecdotes back to a piece of Internet spam from
2001, which listed six separate supposedly outrageous legal awards.
"All of the entries in the list are fabrications-- a search for
news stories about each of these cases failed to turn up anything,
as did a search for each law case," the website reported last year
(7/02).  The original list, Snopes said, included a seventh example
involving a microwaved poodle, which the site suggested had been
dropped because "its inclusion would have immediately called into
question the truthfulness of the other six cases for any number of
folks familiar with urban legends."

Snopes.com also said that the bogus list of lawsuits (sans poodle)
had been reprinted in June 2002 by the New York Daily News, which
"presented it solely as an e-mail it had received, making no
statements as to its likeliness to be real or detailing any attempts
that publication might have made to verify any of the entries."
(The Daily News is owned by Mort Zuckerman.)

It's customary for a news outlet to offer a correction when it has
offered fictional material as fact.  But that was not U.S. News &
World Report's response to the discovery that its corporate chair
and editor-in-chief had cited Internet hoaxes as key evidence in
his editorial.  Instead, the magazine ran a letter to the editor
(7/30/03) from Mary Alexander, president of the Association of Trial
Lawyers, calling the anecdotes "urban myths"-- leaving readers to
decide whether to believe the magazine's editor or the head of an
interested lobbying group about the stories' veracity.

A spokesperson for Zuckerman, Ken Frydman, gave the Washington Post
two rationales for why the magazine would not run a retraction:
First, "These cases were reported in a variety of other reputable
publications, such as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the London
Telegraph." And: "Few Americans would disagree with the proposition
that there are far too many frivolous lawsuits filed."

So if a falsehood has been reported elsewhere, and you still believe
your argument is true, then corrections aren't necessary?  That's
a novel interpretation of journalistic responsibility.

ACTION: Please ask U.S. News & World Report to issue a correction
in line with normal journalistic standards, and to check facts more
carefully in the future.

U.S. News & World Report
Phone: 202-955-2000
mailto:letters@usnews.com

As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously
if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your
correspondence.

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