Watchdogging the Watchdogs!

There has been a lot of chatter on the Web about the differences between bloggers and “real journalists.” The general meme runs along the lines of “bloggers in pajamas will never replace real journalists.”

That may be somewhat true. Many bloggers just repeat stuff they find in other media, take it out of context, and who cares if it’s right or not? Some believe that being first is more important than being right.

However, there are bloggers who work more like journalists than, well, journalists themselves. Case in point: The Smoking Gun. This website went up in 1997 with the intent of publishing public documents and photos, most obtained from “government and law enforcement sources, via Freedom of Information requests and from court files nationwide,” editor William Bastone explains. Newspapers, except in rare circumstances, haven’t done this. Rather, they have used reporters to interpret public documents. Today newspapers have begun putting some documents online, so readers can either read the reporter summary or the document itself.

A lot of the stuff The Smoking Gun posts is for amusement and enjoyment. The site runs collections of mug shots, for instance, that won’t amuse those who are being made fun of. The first document I remember reading years ago there was the testimony of a prostitute who sued actor Jack Nicholson for physically throwing her out of his Mulholland Drive manse after a business transaction went sour.

But this Gun recently has added a couple of important notches. Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter Chuck Philips last month ran a story in The Los Angeles Times about the killing of rapper Tupac Shakur that implicated Sean Combs. The potentially explosive story was based on documents brought forth by a man, James Sabatino, who claimed knowledge of the killing. But as The Smoking Gun found out, the documents were fake, and the Times had to first apologize, then withdraw the story from its website. The paper is currently debating the future of Philips, one of its top reporters, while Combs’ lawyers decide whether to file a suit against the paper’s ownership.

Wednesday TSG printed a story that looked into rapper Akon, a platinum-selling artist whose two albums tell the story of a street gangster who did three years hard time after running what he called “a notorious car theft operation” that stole Porsches, Lamborghinis and Mercedes. The stories have circulated for almost a decade, and both albums have songs that detail the rapper’s early, gangster street life.

These stories, The Smoking Gun points out, were repeated in rock magazines and entertainment sections ad nauseum. Nobody, it seems, ever thought to look into what Akon said – everybody seemed too interested in columns and stories about hoodlums and street cred. His albums have sold about ten million copies, and Billboard magazine named him “Top Artist of the Year” for 2007.

TSG began looking at Akon’s claims after he was arrested in June 2007 for picking up a 15-year-old kid and throwing him into the audience during a performance. Akon was charged with harassment and endangering the welfare of a child and released after a check showed no outstanding warrants or criminal history.

TSG didn't do anything special. it just fact-checked all the lies Akon has spewed in interviews over the years. TSG found Akon “exaggerated, embellished or wholly fabricated” many of the stories about his past, especially his claim that he spent 1999-2002 in prison, a story completely and totally false. “Akon, as it turns out,” says TSG, “is James Frey with catchy hooks and an American Music Award.”

And news organizations wonder why people are losing faith in them? Mark these Exhibits A and B.

Comments

[Harmony]

Obviously Leland the watchdogs have not watched you enough! Go get em!
Thanks,
Harmony