NewsMax
The mainstream media's newspaper of record admitted late Saturday that one of its reporters fabricated part of a news story on Hurricane Katrina relief.
Saying his paper "flunked" the test of basic journalistic fairness, New York Times public editor Byron Calame said Alessandra Stanley's Sept. 5 report claiming that the Fox News Channel's Geraldo Rivera "nudged" an Air Force relief worker out of the way so he could film himself rescuing a Katrina victim had been made up out of whole cloth.
[...]
"My viewings of the videotape - at least a dozen times, including one time frame by frame - simply doesn't show me any 'nudge' of any Air Force rescuer by Mr. Rivera," the Times internal watchdog said, adding, "Ms. Stanley declined my invitation to watch the tape with me."
And the editor responds:
"Ms. Stanley's point was that Mr. Rivera was show-boating - that he was being pushy, if not literally pushing - and I think an impartial viewer of the footage will see it that way," Keller insisted.
Finally, what I consider the money quote and the most sensible response by the paper's consumer advocate:
But Calame countered: "Ms. Stanley certainly would have been entitled to opine that Mr. Rivera's actions were showboating or pushy. But a 'nudge' is a fact, not an opinion. And even critics need to keep facts distinct from opinions."
Reporters can not possibly separate fact from opinion when they write a story. Every word has a connotation. The words that are chosen are chosen to represent a specific variety of thought. A slightly different meaning is conveyed by the terms: "push", "shove", "nudge", "pat", "bump", "jolt", "prod", etc... These meanings are determined by the author and require that the author use judgement in determining which word gets used. Whenever there is judgement on how to describe a scene, bias is present.
But do they have to lie?