Journalistic scandals

Randall Hoven at The American Thinker has compiled a long list of major and minor screwups in the media.

Scott Beauchamp was the last straw. I realized that I need a scorecard to keep track of all the fallen journalists, journalistic mistakes and major and minor screw-ups in the media. I couldn't find one already made, although Wikipedia came close, so I started my own. I apologize if there is a good list already out there, but I looked and could not find.


Offenses include lying and fabricating, doctoring photos, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, falling for hoaxes, and overt bias. Some are hilarious, such as an action figure doll being mistaken for a real soldier. Some are silly, such as reporting on a baseball game watched on TV. Some are more serious.

Randall did some excellent work, listing 62 separate cases. Go and read the entire post, it is quite informative.

Two additions to the list, one obvious and one not so unless you read my blog.

1- Ruth Shalit who committed plagiarism while working for The New Republic.

2- Golf announcer and author Johnny Miller for his book 'I call the shots'. The book wasn't just full of mistakes, but also contained an outright lie on page 224. Miller claiming he won the San Francisco City Championship when in fact he didn't.

Randall also asked-

These offenses have been going on for years, long before the internet. But there does seems to be a rise in the number of reported offenses in recent years. Did the number of offenses go up, or did the fraction of discovered offenses go up?

I truly feel the fraction of discovered offenses is. There appear to be many authors out there taking shortcuts. Both big and small, and many either don't realize how easy it is confirm facts on the internet today or in their arrogance think they are above being fact checked. What is your opinion?

Hat tip- Betsy
Linked to- Samantha Burns, Third World County, Webloggin,