Mr. Man on the Street

Check out Cam Edwards blog about the "Mr. Man on the Street" - a fellow that the New York Times has featured a hundred times as a random, "man on the street". Apparently, being a "man on the street" is a full-time job, at least in NYC.

I was sorry to see Brill's Content go out of business. It was a mag that kept an eye on the media and watchdoged the Fifth Estate. Now we have blogging to do that - but I still miss Brill's.

The media needs watching. Last year the Daily Oklahoman featured an article about a state agency that was full of errors. I was interested to see how misinformation spreads through the media unchecked. In the case I am aware of several small city newspapers both editorialized on the basis of the DO's bad information and reprinted the misinformation without lifting a finger to confirm any of the "information" with the people misrepresented in the DO story. Even the Tulsa World used the misinformation in the Daily Oklahoman for the basis of an editorial that just further spread the errors as fact. None of the newspapers bothered to check out the story or the DO's story before spreading the errors. After the agency contacted the newspapers to alert them to the weighty errors did they correct the story? What do you think?