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November 3, 2011
Paper of Record?
Battle for Brooklyn
We're sure the business relationship between The New York Times and Forest City Ratner Companies has nothing to do with this. Right? Surely, it's just a coincidence. Right?
About a month ago we screened our film “Battle for Brooklyn” in Bellingham Washington. After the film I mentioned to people that they could support the film by writing reviews on the NY Times readers review section. At that point we had 12 powerfully positive reviews and a five star rating (based on 84 votes). A couple of days later I checked to see if anyone had written a review. There was a new review, but the site now said that the film had 29 ratings and a 1 star. Obviously something was wrong.
I contacted a friend at the NY Times to see if he could help. He got the run around for a few days, but was finally told that it was a data issue. Apparently, when they ported the data from one place to another it went cockeyed. At this point I wrote to the film editor, who had been contacted by my friend about the problem. I asked, if they couldn’t fix the data right away, that they make a note on the page to let people know that the data was inaccurate. I was told it was “out of their hands.” Apparently its a “product development” issue.
I understand that data problems happen. However, once the data is published, it becomes an editorial problem. In the age of crowd sourced information, where does responsibility for erroneous information lie?
...After three weeks of waiting for the problem to be fixed, I finally contacted the public editor. I was told that they would look into it. That was one week ago.
NoLandGrab: As Atlantic Yard Report's Norman Oder has often pointed out, given the business relationship between FCRC and The Times (the former developed the latter's headquarters building a few years ago), the paper should be exacting in its coverage. Yet today, nearly eight years after the Atlantic Yards project was announced, they were still erroneously locating it in Downtown Brooklyn. More like the Paper of Wreckord.
Posted by eric at November 3, 2011 11:43 PM