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...the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth  Jack Klugman, left, played Oscar Madison in TV's "The Odd Couple," but did Tony Randall, right, play his roommate Felix Ungar or Felix Unger? |
How much does truth
matter in news stories?
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
Ever since the first
caveman scratched out something in hieroglyphics on his favorite
wall, journalists have been arguing about the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth.
Does it really matter in a modern newspaper story if a brown-eyed
woman is described as having eyes of blue or a six foot man is
identified as average-sized?
Every newsman and woman now has not one editor or five or a hundred
checking their facts but thousands or hundreds of thousands.
Those are the folks on the blog ready to practice “gotcha”
journalism.
Tina Fey did a wonderful parody of Sarah Palin on “Saturday
Night Live,” when she faked an interview with Katie Couric.
This time Couric appeared to be the dumbbell and not the former
governor of Alaska. “Gotcha,” bellowed Fey, playing
Palin in the skit.
I once worked at Sports Illustrated magazine in the struggling
days before they struck gold with the bathing suit issue. Young
reporters like myself were assigned to check for accuracy the
articles written by established stars of sportswriting such as
Roger Kahn.
After three or four or five thousand words and dutiful check
marks over each word signaling its accuracy, eyes would blur,
brains would wander and mistakes would appear. Check marks would
signal accuracy when it just wasn’t so.
A reader would catch quickly that Casey Stengel played for Brooklyn
in 1913 and not for Boston or that the Babe weighed 210 and not
310. Typos were no excuse.
Then came the orange blossoms. They were orange colored pieces
of tissue paper that suggested the checker had erred in his duties
and had to write a long excuse for such failure.
It would immediately put the villain on that list--the undesirable,
unappreciated, excommunicated list.
That’s when it was time to go.
Newspapers, publishers, magazines have always had fact checkers.
It was all part of the reader’s gotcha glee.
Catch a well known writer in an error and your day as a junkyard
digger was made.
Much of this and the values it might mean came up the other day
at a meeting of my journalistic organization, the Society of
Silurians, the oldest journalism group in the country, when writer
Bruce Weber discussed the trauma of working for today’s
New York Times.
He is a splendid writer who specializes now in obituaries at
the Times after a sterling career of wonderful, entertaining
feature writing.
“We do a lot of prepared obits on famous people,”
he said. “I was working on one about the actor Jack Klugman.
He is in his late 80s and ailing. He could go at any day so we
must be ready.”
One of Klugman’s famous roles is the sportswriter character
Oscar Madison in "The Odd Couple". His roommate in
the show is Felix Ungar or Unger.
“In the original play (by Neil Simon) Felix’s
last name is spelled Ungar. In the later movie and television
shows it was spelled Unger. I asked the editors what spelling
to use,” Weber said.
The editors decided they would use both spellings to avoid a
correction by someone who was an "Odd Couple" fanatic
and claimed expertise.
With everyone a journalist now because of blogs and web sites,
it is far too difficult to ascertain the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth.
Especially in these pre-written obituaries that Weber is involved
with almost daily.
Pulitzer Prize winner Ira Berkow, a retired Times sports columnist,
told a tale about the problems of pre-writing obituaries.
“Red Smith (the famed NY Times Pulitzer winner for
commentary) wrote a pre-obit on the great boxer Jack Dempsey,”
explained Berkow. This was shortly before Smith died in 1982.
Dempsey died in 1983.
When Dempsey died the obituary led the paper with compliments
all around for Smith’s masterful handling of the legendary
athlete’s career.
Sports editor Joe Vecchione faced his other sportswriters and
announced. “Smith writes better dead than you guys do alive.”
It was hard to fool the reading public that was not an up to
date journalistic work.
Weber told an amusing baseball story about Bob Uecker, the famed
broadcaster who played in the big leagues.|
“Uecker said he faced Don Drysdale only once and was
called out on strikes on a pitch way outside. When he argued
the call,” Weber said, “the umpire Jocko Conlin
told him the pitch was a strike and so was the next pitch.”
It turned out Uecker only faced Drysdale once and grounded out.
Conlin was not the home plate umpire.
“I never checked the box score. I trusted Uecker’s
memory. Did the truth matter?” Weber asked.
About seven years ago a young Times writer named Jayson Blair
fabricated dozens of stories. He was finally exposed and fired.
“It hasn’t been very easy for any Times writer since,”
Weber said.
Should we journalists give the readers, the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth or should we entertain when it
really doesn’t matter?
©2010 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted April 19, 2010.
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