Writer ethics

Anatomy of a fake news story

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On May 28, Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was involved in a collision and then charged with DUI. This would be mostly a matter of local interest. Since then, a story has spread on the Internet that the charges against him were dropped. This suggests string-pulling and would be an important story if it were true. In fact, no reliable news outlet has confirmed it. Snopes calls it an unfounded rumor. Anything could happen in the future, but as of my writing this, there’s no evidence that the story is true.

It’s hard to tell where made-up stories originate. A tweet by Congresswoman Lauren Boebert asserted the charges were dropped. Donald Trump, Jr. lied on Twitter. Another source was some “news” sites that employ bottom-of-the-barrel freelancers and instruct them to write articles with a partisan spin. They’re called “pink slime” sites. Why pink, I don’t know. They may have names that sound newsy and uncontroversial. Some sites of this kind don’t use human writers at all, just artificial intelligence.
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Writing about Ukraine

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine has us all very concerned, and anyone who writes about it for publication needs to write responsibly. Here are a few thoughts on the subject. I’m addressing writers in the USA; most of it applies everywhere, but I’m writing with Americans in mind.

Beyond assuming that you agree the invasion is outrageous, I’m not saying what position you should take. (If you don’t think it’s outrageous, you aren’t in my target audience.) These are general points regardless of what you think people should do.
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Fanatical publishers

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This post deals with a music publisher, GIA. That puts it a little beyond my blog’s usual scope, but it’s still publishing, and I write lots of songs (though only one has ever made me money) and have edited convention songbooks. The story is hard to believe, but the reports I’ve seen support it. My primary source is a Reason article by Robby Soave. I’ll grant that since I tend to agree with Reason‘s positions, I have to watch out for bias, but in my experience the site’s fact-checking is good, and they don’t often publish wild fictions.

On the other hand, if the report is accurate, the company it calls “the major publisher of religious content” (in choral music) is run by fanatics who don’t just support arson but think there’s “no justification” for opposing it. Or perhaps GIA is run by miserable cowards who will do anything that they think will help their revenues, no matter how unjust. Both possibilities are disturbing.
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Do brown cows dream of chocolate milk?

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Last week I saw a YouTube video purporting to show how dumb the masses are. It cited a poll which allegedly found that 7% of Americans surveyed think chocolate milk comes from brown cows. It’s unlikely, if you think about it, that any significant number of people hold this belief, but it makes viewers feel good to think they’re smarter than others.

A search revealed that lots of sites uncritically reported this result. In fact, when I searched for a stock brown-cow image to stick on this post, many of the results referenced the poll. On the bright side, I found an article that looked carefully at the poll. Just now I found a Columbia Journalism Review article demolishing the claimed result.
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What writers can do 1

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These are dire times. Police have killed George Floyd and David McAtee. Donald Trump had people tear-gassed so he could take a walk. He is threatening illegal military deployments and shooting in the United States. Rioters are destroying property and assaulting people. Journalists have been the target of both police and mobs.

I’ve felt helpless, even though I’m not close to the locations of violence and am relatively safe personally. But we’re seeing the country tear itself apart by a thug president and thugs (both with and without badges) in the streets. One thing I can do, for whoever may notice, is remind the people in my profession that we can make a difference. We can speak out, forcefully and responsibly.

We should speak out for principles, not factions. Telling some group of people how horrible they are may feel great, but it accomplishes nothing. Talk about what is right and wrong. Call attention to wrongdoing — brutality, bigotry, abuse of power. Name names. But don’t attack people for being black or white, male or female, registered to vote as Republican or Democratic.
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