What Does It Say When A Comedy Show Does More Fact Checking Than News Programs?

from the that-doesn't-seem-right dept

Poynter has an interesting article, looking at The Daily Show as being a leader in media criticism, an area where it does an excellent job, even if that's not its intention. But, what struck me most of all in the description of the team behind the show, was that it has a full-time researcher and fact-checker, who looks for multiple sources to verify the content that they're using in the show. Now, in a typical news room, this shouldn't be surprising. But, instead, we've actually seen the opposite. Fewer and fewer news operations have full-time fact checkers (or fact-checkers at all). Yet, here we're talking about a comedy program, whose main job is to make people laugh, and it employs a fact-checker who verifies points with multiple sources. Doesn't that seem backwards?

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Fact Checking vs. Rapid Corrections: Which Is More Important?

from the reporting-vs.-conversations dept

A bunch of folks have been pointing to a recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review, discussing the speed and style with which some "mainstream" media sources and some "new media" sources corrected a particular story. Apparently a newspaper in Arizona misreported some comments by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and the misquote was picked up by numerous blogs and online news sites. However, once it became clear what had happened, the new media sites were much faster to issue corrections, while making it clear what was corrected (often leaving the original up and noting the correction). The mainstream paper -- who originated the story -- was much slower about fixing things, and when it did, simply deleted the mistaken part at first, before later putting up a vague note about the change.

To some extent, I believe this shows the different mindsets of some of these newer publications. I've talked in the past about how I view this blog as a conversation, not a reporting venue. And, as such, I don't delete stuff, even when it turns out that I made a mistake. Instead, I'll do a strikethrough or cross out, along with an update explaining what happened. I don't think it's right to simply "disappear" the original -- though I've had some traditional journalists (and one Hollywood lawyer) act as if I had done something horrible in using a strikethrough on mistaken content.

And yet, personally, I've found that, while I hate it when a story is wrong, the fact that I correct such stories fully and openly has built up greater trust. The few times we've needed to correct such a story, the response has almost always been universally positive rather than negative. As mentioned above, it's like the difference between a conversation and old-school reporting. Old school reporting sought to be "the source of record." A conversation is more about learning as you go. In a conversation, I might say something -- and the person/people I'm talking to may correct me, and from that we all learn. But for traditional reporters, such an error is seen as a huge black mark that requires rewriting history and "disappearing" the mistake -- rather than leaving it there, with a clear update, so that everyone can learn.

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Can You Trust AP Reporting On Its Own Lawsuit With Shepard Fairey?

from the fact-checking? dept

Earlier this week, we wrote about the incredibly dumb move by Shepard Fairey to lie and destroy evidence. The whole thing was just ridiculous -- though the Associated Press has been playing it up as if it's proof that its position on the lawsuit between the two has been vindicated. Of course, nothing is further from the truth. While it is incredibly stupid, it doesn't change the fair use questions at issue. But, if we're going to talk credibility, shouldn't the Associated Press be careful to actually fact check its own articles on a case involving itself? In announcing the news about the Fairey revelation, the AP claimed that Fairey's lawyers had withdrawn from the case. However, his lawyers say that's simply not true, though they may withdraw from the case.

What's really amazing, is the AP's response when this was brought to their attention:

A spokesman for the Associated Press said today that there were "numerous versions and updates" to the breaking news over the weekend and that he was not sure if the Associated Press had run a clarification or correction.

Sure it was "breaking news," but it involved the AP itself. You would think they would fact check the basics.

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Argentinean News Report Worries About Kids Drinking GrogXD

from the fact-checking-is-for-sissies dept

Last week, in the comments on our post about a story in The Onion fooling newspapers in Bangladesh, a commenter named Esteban pointed out that down in Argentina, news reporters recently did a typical moral panic-style piece about teens drinking an alcoholic concoction called Grog XD with the ingredients: "kerosene, propylene glycol, artificial sweeteners, sulphuric acid, rum, acetone, red dye no. 2, scumm, axle grease, battery acid, and/or pepperoni." The source of the story? An ingredients list found on Facebook. Apparently, the reporters were unfamiliar with The Secret of Monkey Island -- the popular game from which the recipe was taken, but thankfully some folks have put together a nice video comparing the two:

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Reporter On The Roxanne Shante Story Chimes In... Sorta

from the well,-well dept

So, yesterday, we published our report noting that the NY Daily News story about Roxanne Shante supposedly earning a PhD from Cornell didn't appear to be fact checked at all, and in checking the facts, we found that almost none of them checked out. I had contacted the Daily News asking them to put me in touch with the reporter on the story, Walter Dawkins, but had not heard back until about an hour ago. Someone claiming to be Dawkins called me (and a call to his phone turned up voicemail claiming to be Dawkins), saying that he heard about me looking into the story from an unidentified "Dan from Cornell" (not from the Daily News, so apparently separate from my request) and wanted to see what I had found out and if there was any more beyond what I had written. So I told him that I had written everything I had found out, but I was more curious in finding out from him if he had done any fact checking at all on the story, and could he back up any of the things in the story that didn't check out.

From there, the call got... weird. First he just started listing off the already debunked sources of the Cornell Magazine (I'm guessing he meant the Cornell Chronicle) and that alum list which was obviously wrong, since it was from '91, well before Shante claimed to have attended Cornell. Then he said he heard about it on a "Hot97 interview." Then there was a pause, and he suddenly got quite agitated, saying he had to "get out of here" and then, "I know what you're doing! No recording, no writing stuff down. Everything I just said is OFF THE RECORD." Of course, that's not how it works. If you have something to tell a reporter "off the record," you establish that first. And I pointed out that surely he, as a professional reporter, knows that. I won't reprint his response, because I guess we can assume that everything after that point in the call was, technically, "off the record" but I can say that he never answered a single question and that most of the rest of the call had him insisting that he had nothing to say to me, followed by me pointing out that he was the one who called me, not the other way around. Eventually, the call ended with him hanging up on me and refusing to answer any of the questions I asked. He did, at one point, promise me an official statement later, but I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, Shante also has been responding oddly, telling one blog that she was just "going to let it go," and posting on Twitter that "in 3days I will rise again everything is temporary today's gossip is tomorrow's deleted messages." Apparently, 'fessing up isn't in the cards.

But, of course, we need those big important newspapers with their professional reporters and fact checkers, or the blogs would run wild with lies, right?

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That Story About Warner Music Paying For A Rappers' PhD? Well... Not So Much

from the fact-checking? dept

We keep seeing claims by newspaper people that bloggers don't fact check and that newspapers do. In fact, in a recent discussion, Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi seemed to blast bloggers for not being able to live without newspaper reporter fact checking:

"I can't imagine a world (or an internet) without the raw factual material that newspapers provide every day, but I guess the bloggers don't really care about any of that. They're mostly about themselves and their opinions, with little thought given to where they're getting their basic facts."

Fair enough. But, as we keep finding out, it seems that newspapers aren't all that concerned about where they get their "facts," either. And sometimes we "bloggers," who are mostly about ourselves and our opinions, have to step in and do some fact checking ourselves.

Case in point: last week, I wrote a post here on Techdirt about how Warner Music helped a famous 80's rapper get a PhD in psychology. The post was based on an article in the NY Daily News by Walter Dawkins. It seemed reasonable to assume that such a professional news organization had fact checked the story. Yet, even before I hit publish, some questions were raised. The article noted that she had received her PhD in psychology from Cornell -- my alma mater. And when I wrote the post up, I initially mentioned that fact (school pride is fun). Yet when I asked some people I know who also went through Cornell's psychology program and would have likely been in a position to have known (or known of) Roxanne Shante, I was told that they hadn't heard of her. Also, multiple attempts to find her dissertation in databases like PsychInfo turned up nothing. Oh yeah, and then there's this: Cornell doesn't offer a clinical psychology degree, and the article clearly states that her work is in clinical psychology.

So, I went searching, and found (first) a video interview where she claimed to have attended Cornell Medical -- which is still Cornell, but is a separate organization based in New York City, rather than up in Ithaca with the rest of the school. So... perhaps her degree was from there. But, then I came across another report claiming that she only got her masters at Cornell, and then returned to Marymount Manhattan College -- where she went as an undergrad -- for the PhD.

I thought that this made some amount of sense, and let the post go out. I figured that perhaps the Daily News reporter got confused about where she got her PhD, but he must have at least fact checked the rest? I should have known better.

After the post went up, some additional comments came in highlighting some other problems with her story, and so I decided to do some of the fact checking it appeared that the big professional reporters at The Daily News did not do. I contacted the administration at Cornell, and received the following response:

We've had everyone from the Graduate School to Alumni Affairs and Development to the Psychology Department search their databases, using every possible configuration of her names, and no one has found any evidence that Ms. Shante ever attended Cornell University.

Oops. Still, others pointed out that there were two references in two separate publications, The Cornell Chronicle and The Cornell Daily Sun, both to a conference held on campus that Shante took part in, though both seemed to be based on her own statements. The Daily Sun is independent of the university (though run by students), but the Chronicle is an official school publication. It's quite telling that the Chronicle article does not follow the established style guidelines of Cornell official publications in referring to an alum: it does not provide a year. It's typical to say things like "Ph.D. '08." That's done for others in that same article. But Shante's Ph.D. claim is not accompanied by a date, suggesting that the reporter was unable to confirm it. There's also an odd list of "Notable Cornell alum" that lists her, but the link is for "Class of '91," which she certainly didn't attend. Also, once again, her listing doesn't include a date.

From there, I contacted the administration at Marymount Manhattan College, and specifically contacted Dean Marguerita Grecco, who is named in the original Daily News article as supporting Ms. Shante, and sending the tuition bills to Warner Music. Despite multiple attempts to reach Dr. Grecco, she refused to respond at all. However, I was able to get a rather curt response from someone else in the administration, claiming that the only information he would give me is: "Roxanne Shante attended classes at Marymount Manhattan College during the fall semester of 1995." That did not answer my questions about what degree(s) she obtained (if any), and only seems to raise more questions. Did she attend classes there beyond that one semester? The school won't say.

Oh yeah, it's worth mentioning: Marymount Manhtattan College does not offer a PhD program in psychology. Only a bachelors.

So, the original article claimed that Warner Music spent over $200,000 on this woman's education. I reached out to Warner Music to ask them who they sent that money to. Admittedly, all of this happened back in the '90s, when Warner Music was owned by Time Warner. It no longer is. It's got new ownership and new management. Yet, despite the fact that folks at Warner Music aren't particularly big fans of this site (I have no clue why), they went digging through all sorts of records to see what they could turn up. From that, they sent over the following statement:

"Roxanne Shante's story is a compelling one and we wish her all success in her good works. With respect to the specifics of her recording agreement, we are not in a position to comment definitively because her agreement was with an independent record label known as Cold Chillin' Records, and the transactional file is more than 20 years old. Our examination of that file however has not revealed any evidence of any 'education clause' in any agreement. That is not a commentary on Ms. Shante's label or on the existence of such a clause. In fact, our view is that artists' compensation can be put to many good uses; if Cold Chillin' guided this artist's compensation to education expenses that would certainly be a worthy one."

So, even if there was an "education clause," Warner Music can't find any record of it. Instead, it appeared to just have a rather typical distribution deal with an indie label that she was signed to. Next up, the article claims that Shante is running "an unconventional therapy practice focusing on urban African-Americans." Unfortunately, searches of the NY database of such professionals has yet to turn up any evidence that she's listed. Admittedly, the interface for that system is not particularly user friendly, but various attempts to find her under various names (both her stage name and her birth name) turned up nothing. In searching around, I could find no business listing for her therapy organization.

Also, I could not find ways to contact her. I did try via a MySpace page that is supposedly hers, but it's not clear if it's really her page, and I have not heard back. Finally, I contacted the NY Daily News, and asked either for additional backup material, an explanation, or to let me speak with the original reporter, Walter Dawkins. As of publishing this, I have not heard from either of them.

I should note that this is yet another great example of how wonderful the Techdirt community is. It was via the comments that many of these questions were raised, and it allowed me to go in search of the details (or lack thereof). I've said before that what makes this site so much fun is the discussion we have in the comments, and this is yet another bit of proof. Update: Looks like friend of the blog Ben Sheffner was doing similar research over the past few days as well, and got Shante to admit the PhD doesn't exist, but she fails to explain pretty much anything else.

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Irony: Columnist Who Berates Bloggers For Not Fact Checking, Didn't Fact Check

from the whoooops dept

A month ago, we wrote about a column by Connie Schultz, of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, supposedly talking up a a plan to change copyright law to better protect newspapers from "parasites." This was a dumb plan no matter how you look at it, and Schultz ended up in a battle of words with Jeff Jarvis that kind of derailed the actual discussion on the plan itself. As we noted recently, the brothers behind the plan, David and Daniel Marburger, contacted us (well David did) to let us know that Schultz had totally misrepresented their plan. So we took a look at the full plan, and, indeed, Schultz's column was simply wrong in describing their plan. While we still think the Marburgers' actual plan is misguided, Schultz's write up of it was not at all accurate.

Schultz summarized the Marburgers' plan like this:

• Aggregators would reimburse newspapers for ad revenues associated with their news reports.
• Injunctions would bar aggregators' profiting from newspapers' content for the first 24 hours after stories are posted.

Neither point is actually in the Marburgers' plan (and, it's important to note that the Marburgers are only talking about a very, very narrow range of "aggregators" which I don't even think count as aggregators). They talk about sites like The Daily Beast, which is a competing publication more than an "aggregator." They make it clear that they think real aggregators like Google News are only a good thing. Also, they flat out do not suggest a 24-hour block makes sense:

1. We do not advocate a statutory 24-hour moratorium on rewriting news reports originated by others. Like you, we'd vigorously oppose that.

2. We do not think that linking to originators' news sites, as Google News does, is bad; on balance, we think it's good for any news originator.

So why bring this up again? Well, it seems Schultz can't leave well enough alone, and has to poke "bloggers" again as being some sort of anti-journalists. In her most recent column she talks up how real journalists fact-check and "citizen-journalist" bloggers do not:

The so-called citizen journalism of most blogs is an affront to those of us who believe reporting and attribution must precede publication.

Fact-checking is tedious; it often derails juicy rumor and deflates many a story.

So... um... why is it that she got her facts wrong and it was blogs that published the full story on the Marburgers' plan? Meanwhile, it was her high-minded colleagues at the Cleveland Plain Dealer who brushed off all the criticism of Schultz by declaring: "It's really a bunch of pipsqueaks out there (on the Internets) talking about what the real journalists do."

In the end, we have an original story that Schultz continues to stand behind, despite it being incorrect. You have a number of bloggers who have been digging into the details, and posting thoughtful analyses of the Marburgers' plan -- while the folks at the Plain Dealer brush them off as "pipsqueaks" who don't fact check? Yeah, that's credible...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm not one of those who thinks there's some sort of war brewing between "mainstream media" and "bloggers." I actually find the whole concept silly. Blogs are simply a publishing platform. Some use them for journalism (including many mainstream media publications). Others don't. Lumping them all together makes no sense. But pretending that old school journalists have some sort of higher ground to stand on just because they work for a publication that prints itself out on paper doesn't make much sense to me.

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Fact Checking? Reporter Claims It Costs $27 To Use The Pirate Bay

from the fact-checking-is-for-sissies dept

One of our readers, going under the name "slogger," pointed out that a recent column by PC World writer David Coursey had some amazing factual errors in it -- though, by the time I read the original it had been "corrected" without any mention of the correction. Apparently, the big professional press not only doesn't need to fact check, it also can just "disappear" the false info when it comes to light and pretend it didn't happen. Except... PC World syndicates its content to other publications, and the San Francisco Chronicle republished the mistaken column in full.

The two big mistakes? First, claiming that The Pirate Bay sells $27 lifetime memberships, and second, that The Pirate Bay's founders are in jail. Neither is true. The second mistake remains in the "corrected without a correction notice" column at the time of this posting -- but perhaps it, too, will soon disappear. The actual column is a misguided rant by someone who doesn't quite understand how The Pirate Bay actually works and what it does (basically: he thinks "stealing" is evil and he'll never support the site even if it goes legit because he can't support the brand). But, considering that he can't get the basic facts right, perhaps it's not surprising that he doesn't understand the difference between "theft" and "infringement" -- and, more importantly, doesn't seem to understand the difference between search engines/trackers and actual infringing content. These are the sorts of basic tidbits of info you'd think that a famed tech reporter/columnist like Coursey (who's been around for ages) would take the time to get right. After all, aren't we told that the professional press is necessary because it's the bloggers who make up stuff?

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NY Times 'Corrects' False Article About Pirate Bay Appeal... Still Gets It Wrong

from the fact-checking? dept

It my seem like I'm pushing on this one a bit, but it's because I am honestly surprised that the NY Times got this one so badly wrong, and that they've been so slow to do anything about it. I actually think the NY Times is an excellent overall newspaper, and I'm as surprised as anyone that they'd muck up a story so much -- especially as its editors are hyping how good their "fact checking" is and how every day people just can't compare.

It started on Friday, when we noted that the NY Times was reporting that The Pirate Bay had lost its appeal in court. The only problem? It hadn't. Not even close. It may eventually lose the appeal, but that decision won't come for some time. It's true that other sources (including The Hollywood Reporter article that the NY Times reporter relied on) also got the story slightly screwed up, but that's no excuse for the NY Times to repeat blatantly incorrect information. The error appears to be caused by the confusion about the difference between a district (lower) court and the appeals (higher) court. The appeal is over whether or not the district court judge in the case was biased. So, as a part of that appeal, the district court told the appeals court that, no, its judge was not biased. This is to be expected. Did anyone think that the district court wouldn't defend its judge?

However, many people simply got confused, and when they read that a Stockholm district court said (in the appeals court) that the judge wasn't biased, they assumed that it was a court ruling, not just testimony/a filing from one of the participants. Still, you would think with a story that's received so much attention that the NY Times would check with someone first to make sure such a ruling actually came down.

On Monday, however, some of our readers noted that the NY Times had "updated" or "corrected" its story. However, the really amazing thing? Even after realizing that it got the story wrong, it still hasn't gotten the story right. Instead, they changed the first sentence from: "A Swedish court has denied the appeal of four men convicted of violating copyright law.... " into "A Swedish court has said that the judge who presided over the case of four men convicted of violating copyright law for their involvement in the Pirate Bay, an Internet file-sharing service, was not biased against them."

Okay, that's closer but still wrong. First, the NY Times left the headline as is, saying "Appeal Is Denied in Pirate Bay Case." Then, the current first sentence doesn't make any distinction at all between what the lower court said as a participant in the higher court case and what the higher court will ultimately pronounce as a ruling. In fact, given the headline, nearly everyone would still read that first sentence to say that the court has issued a ruling denying bias. The NY Times also added this correction line that would likely confuse most people, saying: "An earlier version of this report stated that the men's appeal had been denied." But reading the article, it still sounds like the appeal has been denied. Is it that difficult for a big journalistic endeavor like the NY Times to fact check a story? Even when told that the story is wrong, and then going and "correcting" it, they got the story wrong.

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Online Journalism vs. Print Journalism: Real Time vs. Batch Processing

from the think-about-it dept

Last week, there was a bit of a silly fight over the NY Times publishing an article noting that blogs sometimes publish rumors. I didn't find the story to be all that bad, actually, as it did a fair job explaining why those blogs publish rumors without confirmation, and how they do it in a reasonable way (i.e., saying it's a rumor and hasn't been confirmed). Some felt the article was a hit piece, but on the whole it actually seemed pretty reasonable and accurate. Still, in response to that, Cody Brown (via Jay Rosen) put up a fascinating and thought-provoking writeup comparing online to print journalism -- noting that print is "batch processing" while online is "real-time processing" and explaining why this makes it so difficult for print to either understand the value of online journalism, or to keep up with it. To be honest, I think the point was made even clearer in last week's hilarious Daily Show takedown of the NY Times, where Jason Jones refers to the newspaper as "aged news" and asks Rick Berke, the assistant managing editor to point out a single article in today's newspaper that "happened today" (at around 3 minutes):

Separately, I should point out that I find it amusing that around 1:45, the video quotes Kristin Mason, the NYT's communications coordinator, noting that "The NY Times really prides itself on making sure that the information we're putting out in the newspaper and online is factual. We have editors going through and checking on a variety of sources...."

Fair enough... But what happened on Friday? That's when the NY Times falsely reported that The Pirate Bay had lost its appeal... and that false story has remained uncorrected at least up until I published this story. It appears that the "pride" the NY Times takes in getting the story right doesn't necessarily extend to things like The Pirate Bay.

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Has The Pirate Bay Lost Its Appeal... Or Should We Not Trust The NY Times?

from the fact-checking? dept

Someone just alerted me to a NY Times story claiming that the guys behind The Pirate Bay have lost their appeal of the verdict that found them guilty. That would be big news (and it may very well happen). However, I can't find anything else to support it. The NY Times credits the Hollywood Reporter, whose only recent article I can find on the subject merely claims that the TPB guys failed to get the case thrown out. But digging deeper, the only information I can find is that the District Court, which made the original ruling has told the Appeals Court that there was no bias. That's not surprising -- of course the District Court is going to say it wasn't biased and that its judge wasn't biased. But I haven't seen anything that says the Appeals Court has ruled one way or the other on the issue. It looks like the reporters at The Hollywood Reporter and the NY Times may have gotten confused about the difference between the District Court and the Appeals Court -- and assumed that because the District Court claimed the judge wasn't biased, the Appeals Court had ruled that way. Now, it may well come to pass that the Appeals Court does rule that way, but I haven't seen any reports of that yet, and given how news has spread about this case, you would think such reports would have been out there.

But, you know, it's the professional reporters at the NY Times who fact check stuff. We bloggers just make up innuendo and rumor. Surely, they couldn't have gotten the story wrong, right?

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Newspapers Who Relied On Bebo Party Report Sued For Defamation

from the fact-checking?-who-does-that-any-more? dept

Back in May there were a series of stories that made the rounds concerning a British girl who had her 16th birthday party at her parents pricey estate in Spain. The stories, based on the girl's own account on the social network Bebo claimed that she had posted an invite to various social networks, and tons of people showed up and it turned into a violent drunken mess. In an age of "oh no, look at what those crazy kids are doing on social networks!" reporting, the press had a field day talking about it.

There was just one problem: much of the story was apparently made up by the girl.

Now the mother of the girl is suing six newspapers for writing the story (found via Slashdot). There are a lot of questions raised by this. The woman's daughter spread the story herself -- so if the mother has a complaint, you would think it's with the daughter. But, at the same time, what kind of newspaper reports on something like that based on a single first-person account of the 16-year-old hosting the party, rather than getting any kind of fact check confirmation?

Still, it seems like some of the questions being drawn from this are going in the wrong direction. The article reports:

The case is expected to have far-reaching consequences for third parties who use or publish information from social networking sites. Lawyers say it could place a duty on all second-hand users to establish the truth of everything they want to republish from such sites. Mrs Hudson not only denies the allegations but accuses the newspapers of misusing information posted by her daughter on the Bebo site, saying there was no legitimate public interest in publishing material from the site. Mrs Hudson says that, because the information was inaccurate, the papers cannot rely on the defence of fair comment.

Her solicitor, David Price, said the case raised important issues of libel, privacy and copyright in relation to the unauthorised use of material taken from social networking sites.

That threatens to be quite chilling. If you can't republish direct quotes from someone who was at an event, it would seem to be quite stifling. I recognize this is in the UK, which has much stricter libel laws, but it still sounds like it might be going too far. As for the "copyright" claim, that's the most questionable of all. Claiming that the fact that her daughter's own account was incorrect means that "fair comment" is no longer allowed is ridiculous. If you're quoting someone for news purposes, the copyright issue shouldn't depend on whether or not the person you're quoting is lying.

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If You Need A 2008 Prediction... How About: The Fact Checker Is Dead... Long Live The Fact Checker

from the bah-who-needs-it? dept

I've been writing Techdirt since the summer of 1997 (yeah, we let the 10 year anniversary slip by without notice), and every year I've resisted calls to do "predictions" for the following year. They always seem like lame filler content that rarely adds much value. And, with predictions articles and posts showing up left and right, you'd reasonably expect some ridiculously lame ones. However, it is a bit surprising to see how ridiculous The Economist's 2008 predictions are this year, as ripped apart by Marc Andreessen. Andreessen does a fine job pointing out how whoever wrote up the piece (damn those byline-less Economist stories!) clearly has no clue what he's talking about.

It gets facts wrong and draws some dubious conclusions out of those incorrect facts. It starts out with a pet peeve favorite: the ever popular claim that the internet is about to run into trouble handling traffic growth. Amusingly, the article claims to support this prediction with "some certainty" even though the most recently debunked telco-backed report didn't even think we'd see any troubles until at least 2010. The prediction makes the huge error of stating that 90% of all internet traffic is spam email -- which is probably based on some (questionable) reports claiming that 90% of all email is spam -- but email hardly represents a significant segment of internet traffic. You would think that it would mention things like BitTorrent or file sharing as the usual culprits -- but somehow the Economist reporter thinks it's spam that will destroy the internet. And, as Andreessen notes, the only actual proof the article presents is that sales of networking traffic are way up -- which indicates that any problem is being solved, not that it's getting worse. One thing that's become clear in all these reports about the internet breaking: it's almost always made by someone who doesn't understand technology. Whenever the technologists have their say, they'll note that there's not much to worry about and technology should be able to contain any problems.

What may be more interesting, however, is this tiny point noting how fact checking has gone out of style in the press -- but it doesn't much matter when you have folks like Marc Andreessen willing to fact check for you, with the only price (okay, perhaps it's not cheap) being the mocking you get and the hit to your reputation as a top of the line publication. Perhaps it would have been cheaper to actually check the facts -- especially on things as easy as the amount of internet traffic that's spam, as well as whether or not Google has already bid on the 700 MHz auction (as the article claims) despite the fact that said auction hasn't happened yet. And, of course, this doesn't even get into the fact that a predictions article can be done with plenty of time to spare, meaning it should have had plenty of time for fact checking. Meanwhile, Andreessen only takes on the first two of The Economist's predictions, but the third one is equally ridiculous, claiming (again, incorrectly) that thanks to the bankruptcy of SCO, Linux is now "popular in small businesses and the home." It may be gaining in popularity, but it has little to do with the SCO case, and any popularity from Ubuntu came about long before SCO's bankruptcy -- and it would still be a stretch to call it "popular" outside of a small core audience. It's as if whoever wrote the piece is living in an alternate reality.

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