It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 
I just canceled my short-lived subscription to Time Magazine. As detailed here, on May 26 Time published a letter signed by one Thomas J. Stokes of Fredonia but actually penned by the Republican National Committee.

Time was not only not alert enough to catch this bit of "Astroturf" (days after alert bloggers posted warnings about it), and not only has it refused to notify its readers of this sabotage against truth even after hundreds of individuals (including myself) notified the magazine, but it meanwhile publishes loads of letters to the editor and news stories about the ethical problems at the New York Times. I suppose ethical problems at Time Magazine would be too uncomfortable to consider.

Time's private responses to those who have written in complaint are telling. First, Time has mostly refused to answer. Indeed, my first letter dropped into a big black hole of nothingness.

Second, after enough people respond, Time wrote to a few correspondents (still not me) that they published the letter to "bring balance" to the positions held on the letters page. Well, HELLO! If Time had to resort to publishing an astroturfed plagiarized piece of copy written by the Republican National Committee in order to "bring balance" to the letters to editor, then that says two things. First, Bush's tax proposal can't have been too popular among letter writers. Second, reading the letters to the editor in Time magazine isn't going to give you an accurate picture of popular mood, with actual imbalances of opinion washed over in the interest of representing "balance."

Third, after I cancelled my subscription, Time finally wrote back to me (looks like money is their bottom line), saying "We are sorry indeed to hear of your disenchantment with TIME. But of
course we understand that our efforts can't hope to live up to
everyone's idea of what a newsmagazine should be..."

And here's the rub, as I sent my final e-mail to the folks at Time, not knowing whether it would actually be read. In this case, Time's efforts COULD have hoped to live up to everyone's idea of what a newsmagazine should be. There's a simple standard in journalism called the publication of corrections when a misrepresentation takes place. Thomas J. Stokes, acting at the request of the Republican National Committee, misrepresented the authorship of the letter he submitted. He did this because he and the Republican National Committee both know that people will listen with less skepticism to "Thomas J. Stokes" than to the "Republican National Committee." When notified of this misrepresentation, Time Magazine could have corrected the error in two short lines.

Simple. Easy. It CAN be done. But it won't be. And this is the real rub: if Time Magazine won't take the simple and easy steps to ensure their journalistic integrity, how can we trust them to take the challenging and difficult steps when they are needed?

Posted by James Cook at 10:53 PM. # (permalink)




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