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A secret settlement, a voicemail transcript and a newsroom's collapsing explanation. The News of the World scandal exposed more than illegal reporting: it exposed how a media company defended its own account of events, how other institutions failed to break it open, and how accountability narrowed as it moved toward the top.
A secret settlement, a voicemail transcript and a newsroom's collapsing explanation. The News of the World scandal exposed more than illegal reporting: it exposed how a media company defended its own account of events, how other institutions failed to break it open, and how accountability narrowed as it moved toward the top.
Fox's researchers rejected the Dominion allegations. Private messages exposed doubts about the claims and fears about losing viewers. The court record shows how those warnings coexisted with broadcasts that kept the false story alive.
The magazine's discredited University of Virginia story produced a retraction, a jury verdict and multiple settlements. The court record shows how a publication investigating institutional failure became an institution with failures of its own to answer for.
He found the bomb and helped clear the crowd. Then a newspaper identified him as the FBI's suspect. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution eventually won his libel case. The record of that victory still raises hard questions about how journalism handles the people whom official suspicion gets wrong.
Stephen Glass fabricated reporting and the material used to support it. His case exposes a problem that survives the firing of a dishonest reporter: a publication can lend its authority to an accusation without having an independent basis for believing it.
A report about escaping Afghanistan put Zachary Young under national scrutiny. The ensuing defamation case put the newsroom's language, doubts, and editorial judgment under scrutiny of their own.
Operation Tailwind became a case study in an accusation outrunning its evidence. The less familiar aftermath raises another question: when CNN explained its failure, did its treatment of a key source create a new misleading impression?