Comment by vor_
11 days ago
Respectfully, I find this to be an unwarranted positive reaction to have toward this situation. What other action could Ars possibly take as a journalistic business? The quotes are indisputably false. This is hardly a praise-worthy action to take. It's the expected and required action.
With regard to editorial review, an editor didn't catch the error. The target of the false quotes had to register on Ars and post a comment about it. To top it off, more than one Ars commenter was openly suspicious that he was a fake account. Only when some of the readers checked for themselves to see that the quotes were indeed falsified did it gain attention from Ars staff.
This was literally the best possible case for catching it - “quoted” person complaining, clearly visible page doesn’t have the quotes, and it still was a fight.
Most people would have had no hope and nobody would ever know.
We have a problem right now there is a lot of a bad 'news' sites and the few that do any good get slammed because they listen. Go ahead, slam Fox news and see how far that goes. I think this creates a very negative incentive to be responsible in journalism. If you try a little you will be hammered but if you don't try at all you get the pass. My point was, and still is, that we need to encourage the positive when we see it in hopes that it creates more positive in the future. It is just like raising a child. If you jump on them because they only did part of the right answer then next time they will do none of the right answer. The big point here is we need to be asking ourselves: What is the goal of the criticism? Are we achieving it? Is there a better way?