However, as a former print reporter and editor I often am aghast at the sloppiness of the on-line publications.
I AM NOT a weapons expert, but even my tired eyes can see that the caption Israel HaYom editors allowed is in error.
Perhaps a PR flack for Rafael, the company that makes the tank killer missile, sent the caption with the photo. Flacks are known for “taking liberties.” (I once flacked for Tel Aviv University; I know about “taking liberties.”)
It started with “cold type”
When the U.S. Air Force and I parted company in Orlando FL I found a job as a “bank boy” at the Orlando Sentinel-Star, then owned lock, stock, and ink barrel by one Martin Andersen. The paper now belongs to The Tribune Company and the Star is history.
Woe to the reporter, the editor, the proofreader, and the page makeup person if Andersen’s name was incorrectly spelled.
Andersen was a “real” newspaperman who loved his newspapers. He was capable of reading type even when “seven sheets to the wind,” but he also had confidence in his employees, even a young printer’s devil as I was then.
This was back in the day of hot type.
And it was “hot.” Literally.
Type was set on lead “slugs” the length of a column’s width. The slugs were made from lead heated to about 450oF, the melting point.
People served apprenticeships and “graduated” to more responsible jobs. Bank boy was at the bottom of the composing room totem pole.
I finished my apprenticeship at Gannett’s first Today newspaper in Cocoa FL and helped to put out its first edition. A major event in any newspaper person’s life.
And then came cold type
Cold type, as the name implies, is “cold.” It is typeset on special paper that is pasted down on a form.
No special skills are needed by the paste-up person. Newspapers saved lots of money by eliminating skilled personnel on hot type typesetting machines and by getting rid of skilled jobs in general.
The trouble was, and is, a really sloppy product.
But anyone could be a cold type “printer.”
Reporters keyed their stories directly to a computer where an editor might catch a faux pas. Spell check: Yes. Fact check: No. Stupidity check: No.
And then came the internet
The Internet allowed anyone almost anywhere to be a “journalist.” After all, what is a “journalist” but someone who keeps a journal.
There must be a distinction between “journalist” in its common sense and “blogger,” which is what I am as this is keyed. I don’t keep a journal and I no longer really “report” the news as I once did.
Anyway, with the arrival of the Internet for the masses, everyone could be a blogger or journalist or PR flack.
Sadly, in the news business, the level of professionalism sank to a new low.
When a caption writer either believes unquestionably a flack’s copy, as someone apparently did with the Rafael piece (ibid.) or simply doesn’t do his, or her, homework — looking at the accompanying PR video — and can’t tell a rifle from a missile, something is amiss.
In truth, the rifle does fire a missile — the bullet at the end of the cartridge — but the caption stated that the soldier was firing a Spike SR missile.
Admittedly, even back in the days of hot type mistakes were made, and the person who made the mistake paid a price for it.
Bloggers can, and do, make statements that have zero truth; statements that were heard second, third, or forth hand. Attribution — identifying sources — is unnecessary for bloggers. A good editor challenged reporters to attribute everything, otherwise what the reporter wrote was an editorial, and THAT was far out of the reporter’s area of responsibility.
Bloggers generally lack editors.
On-line publications have editors, but it is questionable if the editors actually edit.
Fortunately, with the popularity of computers, most people use spell check by default. (Grammar checkers are another matter.)
Still,
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
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