“Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information.” ~ Michael Scott
Unless you’ve been living under a bridge, you have surely heard by now the hullabaloo surrounding conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh and his minority partnership in a bid to buy the St. Louis Rams. Limbaugh, along with other investors led by Blues owner Dave Checketts, approached current Rams ownership to talk about the possibility of purchasing the team. This, predictably, set off a firestorm of controversy around the country, with columnists, sportscasters, players, and fans weighing in on whether or not the league should allow a controversial public figure like Limbaugh to own an NFL franchise. Limbaugh’s racial views have been bandied about, quotes that he has made in the past have been discussed, and accusations have been made. The end result was that yesterday, Checketts said that rather than have the attempt to buy and keep the Rams in St. Louis be jeopardized, they were dropping Limbaugh from the group.
I’m not interested in discussion over whether Rush Limbaugh is a racist. He has a three hour radio show in which he can speak for himself, and plenty of people listen, so the public at large can make those determinations for themselves. What I am interested in is how this blossoming debate has further exposed the shoddy state of journalism in the twenty-first century.
At the heart of the issue lie a couple of quotes, one in particular, that has been attributed to Limbaugh from a variety of corners, everywhere from Democratic political strategist James Carville, to sports columnists Bryan Burwell and Jason Whitlock, to NBC journalist David Shuster. The primary quote under discussion is said to have been uttered by Limbaugh in 1998:
“Let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”
The second quote, which has gotten less attention but is no less inflammatory, is this:
“You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray (Dr. King’s assassin). We miss you, James. Godspeed.”
Obviously, if Limbaugh had actually uttered these quotes, one touting the benefits of slavery and the second honoring James Earl Ray, this would likely be enough to end his illustrious (or infamous, depending on which view of Limbaugh you have) career.
There’s one problem. No one can seem to ascertain whether he actually said it.
Burwell, a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was one of the first to strike by touting the slavery quote. In a column on October 7th, he chided the NFL for their greed and conservative politics, and advised them to think twice before agreeing to allow Limbaugh to even obtain minority ownership in the Rams. Along the way, he quoted Limbaugh comparing the NFL to the Crips and the Bloods, and says those are “Limbaugh’s words.” Which they are. But he then goes on to say, “So are these” and gives the slavery quote.
The problem is that Burwell did not do his research when it came to the slavery statement. In his latest column, he defends the quote, stating that it was reported in a 2006 book called “101 People Who Are Really Screwing America” by Jack Huberman. He goes on to state that the quote was in line with other things Limbaugh had said, so he didn’t bother to verify the quote anywhere else. There are so many problems with this that I don’t know where to begin. The first is that Huberman is an author who is the polar opposite of Limbaugh, an unabashed liberal (and atheist) with a vicious streak. His written works include “The Bush-Haters Handbook,” “The GOP-Haters Handbook,” and “The Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Non-Believers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound.” In his “101 People” book, he includes in his list of people who are “screwing America” a wide variety of subjects, among them J.K. Rowling, Dr. Dobson, people who buy SUV’s, and God. So it’s not as if this is an objective source. Using a single source for such a controversial quote is inexcusable in its own right, using a single source with such an obvious bias is doubly inexcusable.
Working in the journalism industry should tip Burwell to the fact that not everything that gets published or goes to press is fact. Using a little known book by an obscure author with an obvious grudge to prove a point is irresponsible journalism. Especially, and this is important, if Limbaugh’s racist overtones are so obvious. If it’s so apparent that Limbaugh is a racist, why, of all the quotes Burwell could have apparently sourced, did he use an unsubstantiated one that could only be found one place? The same question applies to anyone who has quoted the slavery quote over the last week or so. If it’s so easy to find racist commentary by Rush Limbaugh, why use this particular quote? It’s as if those using this quote just went somewhere where there was a list of alleged comments by Limbaugh, and picked a couple of the most compelling without checking to see whether they were accurate or not.
Which brings me to my next point. What I would really like to know is whether Burwell, Whitlock, and the others who have repeated this actually did so by obtaining a copy of Jack Huberman’s book, reading it, and then quoting it. Because there are a few other places the quote has been referenced, including a couple of anti-Limbaugh websites….and Wikipedia.
Now we all know what Wikipedia is. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia which is open to the public, and anyone can log on and make changes to any entry they want. The first thing you are told by any professor in any college when talking about sources for papers is that Wikipedia is NOT an acceptable source. That’s because people deliberately fabricate information on Wikipedia, or enter information that is unsubstantiated. The administrators of Wikipedia try their best to make sure the information is as accurate as possible, but by its very nature, Wikipedia is a breeding ground for biased, unsubstantiated rumors and information without objectivity. I can think of no reason whatsoever that a credible journalist would use Wikipedia as a primary or secondary source.
Now, I don’t know if Burwell, Whitlock, Carville, Shuster, or anyone else who has repeated the slavery quote got their information from Wikipedia. Since Burwell’s column went to press, the Post-Dispatch has issued an addendum to the column noting that the quote has not yet been substantiated. Whitlock, who quotes both the Earl Ray and slavery quote, has since updated his column to note that he got them from Huberman’s book. Initially, both columns had stated unequivocally that the words did, in fact, belong to Limbaugh. Once called on it, both issued clarification that they got the quotes from Huberman’s book, and nowhere else. But color me skeptical. I doubt Whitlock or Burwell or anyone else who has referenced the quote actually read the Huberman book. It is MUCH more likely that they either pulled them off a website, or got them from Wikipedia.
Why Wikipedia? Well, because with the rise of social media, journalists are more and more using unconventional methods in order to obtain information for columns or stories. Consider this: According to a new survey by the Middleberg Communications and the Society for New Communications Research, a whopping FIFTY-ONE PERCENT of journalists use Wikipedia to assist in their reporting. Now, I doubt that means that fifty-one percent of journalists are using Wikipedia as a source. After all, I’ve used Wikipedia to jump start a search, and many times the entries there contain links to the source material, which is sometimes credible. I think it’s not unlikely that many people in that fifty-one percent might use Wikipedia in this manner, and I don’t see a particular problem with this.
However, the twenty-four hour news cycle, the flagging paper industry, the explosion of blogs and alternative media such as The Rush Limbaugh Show, have all placed an increasing amount of pressure for journalists to deliver news at breakneck speed. Add to that the increased rancor that exists in politics today which has bled over into newsrooms, and you have the perfect storm of journalists who have a whole world of misinformation at their fingertips and a motivation to use it. Over the last five to ten years, we’ve seen plenty of journalistic screw-ups, everything from Dan Rather and the Bush National Guard story to Newsweek’s “Koran flushing” incident, and all of them were completely avoidable. Obviously all these aren’t connected to Wikipedia, but an over reliance on faulty or contrived sources were to blame. Combining half of surveyed journalists in this new era of journalism with a flawed research tool like Wikipedia is a recipe for disaster. Sure, some journalists will know that Wikipedia shouldn’t be used…and others will know that they’ve got a deadline to meet and as long as Wikipedia provides a source, why bother to check it out?
Even when the stories aren’t political, journalists get caught with their pants down (metaphorically speaking) because of their own laziness and inefficiency. Earlier this year, when French composer Maurice Jarre passed away, Shane Fitzgerald, a student from Dublin University, decided to try an experiment. He went to Wikipedia and posted a false quote which he attributed to Jarre. The whole process took about fifteen minutes. And then he sat back and waited.
Wikipedia’s vetting crew found the quote and scrubbed it clean, but not before newspapers worldwide spotted it and decided it sounded plausible enough. So they added it to obits of Jarre, even though the quote had no sources shown on Wikipedia. It wasn’t until a month went by, and Fitzgerald finally contacted some of the news agencies responsible, that they realized that the Jarre quote was fabricated. Only one paper publicly apologized, the Guardian from the UK. Others either corrected the obit quietly or some not at all (it’s possible that they could have done so since the story broke several months ago). Regardless, Fitzgerald exposed a crucial flaw in the way some journalists operate. When in doubt, use the source anyway and apologize later.
The American Journalism Review wrote an interesting piece last year about the use of Wikipedia in newsrooms. It points out the flaws in the database, as well as noting that some journalists use it as a starting point for trying to find more credible sources. There’s some division over whether or not Wikipedia should be used, and some journalists are staunchly against it.
Asked his opinion of Wikipedia, Phillip Blanchard, the Washington Post copy editor who started testycopyeditors, responds, “I’m not sure what I could add, beyond ‘don’t use it’ and ‘it’s junk.’”
Other news rooms, though, are not so discriminating. For instance, the Los Angeles Times, who has used Wikipedia.
Melissa McCoy, the Times’ deputy managing editor in charge of copy desks, says the paper occasionally allows Wikipedia attribution. “We’re certainly not going to use Wikipedia as a stand-alone news source, but we’re not going to exclude it if it takes us somewhere,” she says. “If a reporter spots something in there and it makes them do an extra phone call, it’s silly” not to use it.
Ultimately though, the AJR piece concludes by quoting David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter from the New York Times, who says: “No matter who your sources are, when you sign your name, you are responsible for every word, every thought, every concept.”
Which brings us back to Burwell, Whitlock and company. Regardless of what you think about Rush Limbaugh, looking at it objectively, the shoddy journalism exhibited ought to bring down serious repercussions and instigate a larger debate about how journalism is conducted in the age of Technology. Burwell could use this opportunity to admit that he was too lazy to do some digging and find out whether the quote was accurate. He could admit that his research methods are flawed, that if the quote is left unsubstantiated it will bring further reproach to the Post-Dispatch, and that moving forward, in the future, he’ll try not to be such a lazy, inefficient screw-up. He could even state that he’s sorry while STILL saying he disagrees with Limbaugh’s inclusion in the ownership group.
Instead, Burwell has this to say:
Fine, let’s play along for the time being and take him at his word that he was inaccurately quoted in the Huberman book. Heck, let’s go along for the full ride and believe that it was all a horrible “fabrication.”
So what are we left with?
Well, essentially, I think we just threw a deck chair off the Titanic.
Fine. Let’s play along for the time being and pretend that Burwell’s use of the quote wasn’t a shoddy piece of journalism.
What are we left with?
In my opinion, a deliberate and malicious hack job by a loud mouth, know-it-all sportscaster who’s so egotistical that spots for his radio show tell us he’s “completely full of himself.” A more accurate description of Burwell would be “completely full of crap.”
