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May 11, 2011
Truth in the Age of Snark
Rumur.com
by Michael Galinsky
Battle for Brooklyn filmmaker Michael Galinsky posts an interesting and well-worth-reading essay on separating fact from fiction.
In the age of the internet snark is much more important than fact to a disturbing degree. “Reputable” news gathering organizations seem to be devoid of fact checkers and editors are loathe to issue corrections even when the stated facts are clearly wrong. Snark is employed to tell the story the “reporter” sets out to tell, rather than having to do the work of finding out the story. While it is obviously more fun to be snarky than it is to be right, the end result is an extremely fluid relationship to the truth.
When powerful PR people push forth inaccuracies, like projected job numbers and fiscal benefits, it’s nearly impossible to get corrections. With very straightforward facts it should be simple to get a correction, but it never is. With our recent documentary about the Atlantic Yards situation, “Battle for Brooklyn” we have chosen not to focus on the nitty-gritty details of the story, but we have taken great pains to make sure that our facts, when put forth, are correct. We consulted with Atlantic Yards Report blogger, Norman Oder, as we finalized the cut. Norman has been the Don Quixote of fact checking over the past six years. He drives the editors (and us) a little crazy, but if all media (and particularly news media which presents itself as dealing in facts) takes a pass on paying attention to the literal truth, we start to get into very murky water.
...Recently we showed a rough cut of the film at a legal conference focusing on condemnation issues. We were surprised to find that the condemning judge and the Empire State Development Corporation’s (ESDC) attorney that led the condemnation legalities were in the front row (this is a fact). After the movie the judge had kind words for the film. The condemning attorney did not. In fact he demanded a special session the next day to clear up issues with the film. The following day at his special session it seemed that he only wanted to attack Daniel’s character. He discussed confidential negotiations that he had held with Daniel’s lawyer in order to paint Daniel as a greedy holdout. The following day Daniel’s lawyer emailed me the non-disclosure form that this lawyer had signed previous to his discussion.
Posted by eric at May 11, 2011 11:23 AM