Clicks over credibility.

I watched a documentary a few years ago about the decline in journalistic standards. I wish I could remember the name of it, because it was really good - I think it might have been on the BBC. One of the things they talked about was sources, and how newspaper editors used to say "make sure you get a name". Now you regularly see articles with "a source familiar with the matter" (or something similar) used instead.

I expect that a lot of people go into the job with good intentions, but then they find that it doesn't work like they think it does.

I had personal experience of The Guardian's poor fact checking. A friend of mine posted some pics on my forum of some graffiti - a graffiti war between the artist Banksy and another graf legend called King Robbo (RIP). They'd started painting over each other's pieces. I reposted my friend's pics on another forum along with a quote from my friend - and I used a quote box, so the quote was clearly attributed to my friend's name. A reporter from The Guardian saw my forum post, wrote an article about it, using the pics without asking, and added this: -

One graffiti aficionado, calling himself Sigma, wrote a blog entry decrying the destruction of a piece of street art history.

“Now I like Banksy’s stuff and I like this but the cost is too high,” he said. “Fair enough over the years this piece got pretty dogged and ‘vandalized’ but for the most part it was still visible history… long live King Robbo.”

I'm not a graffiti aficionado, I didn't write a blog entry, I didn't decry the destruction of a piece of art, nor is the given quote attributable to me. Obviously, it's not a massively important news story, but they couldn't even get the basics right. I contacted them to let them know that numerous elements of the article were wrong, but nobody ever got back to me.