Only celebrity journalists?
In The News, NUS Thursday, October 15th, 2009
“Tabloids duped by celebrity hoaxes” is a story that has dominated the UK press today.
“Chris Atkins and his team put in hoax calls to some newsrooms, including that one girl band singer was a physics wizard, only to see the details printed — unchecked — in the press the next day.” we are told.
“And we specifically wanted to see how much journalists fact-checked their stories. So in order to do this, we made some stories up.”
Aside from great PR for his new film, Mr. Atkins does highlight a serious problem not just for celebrity journalism but journalism more generally. At EducationState we are concerned that it appears education journalists lap up PR stories as fact and disseminate them for free. There have been calls for science journalists to be taken to court for making false claims that endager lives so why not do the same for education commentators? At least this will compel them to verify their claims and check the evidence.