Our unconfirmed report about Bocado car theft leads to changes in editorial policy
Creative Loafing’s Food Editor and main restaurant critic, Besha Rodell, wrote a thoughtful piece about journalistic standards within the blogging community.
As an example of bloggers getting it wrong, she pointed out that What Now Atlanta published an unconfirmed report that five cars were stolen from the Bocado parking lot Friday night when in fact, police confirmed only one stolen car.
While we qualified our original story by saying it was unconfirmed, Rodell was right–we shouldn’t have posted what turned out to be a rumor.
In our rush to be first (or in this case, second–we sourced the original five car theft from Foodie Buddha) we violated our own editorial policy of not publishing a story without confirmation from reliable sources. And for that, we apologize.
Moving forward, we will no longer use other blogs as sources unless they attribute their news with a quote or confirmation from a source outside their blog.
Thanks, Besha, for calling us out. We deserved it.
12 Responses
Your so called “editorial policy” is a joke. I think you should start reporting real news with confirmed facts as opposed to making up stories that aren’t true – that would be a good start!
I really do like this blog but as Besha states, “…reporting rumors without confirmation, especially those that could potentially hurt a business, is not only irresponsible, if it’s wrong it’s libel.”
It is easy to make this error in writing. The good thing is that you own up to it and will make an effort to keep it from happening in the future.
Stand up move What Now Atlanta. Keep up the good work.
On a side note, does it really make it any better than only one car was stolen as opposed to five. All this did was bring more attention to the matter.
I have to giggle when I see you called out by Creative Loafing. A periodical whose regular bias toward petty criminals has made it a joke in the minds of critical thinkers of Atlanta.
I read “unconfirmed” in your article and realized there was probably confirmed information coming later. The article would have been more damaging with a wrong restaurant cited or if no crime had been committed at all.
If you learn any lesson from Ms. Rodell it should be that you’re being read and that a local paper finds you credible and possibly a threat.
I am happy to see that an open discussion on credible sources has helped you reconsider and improve your editorial policies. But what about your approach toward Health Reports? I still stand behind the multiple requests for more in-depth reporting and inclusion of follow-up reports on these matters. I may have missed something, but I have yet to see your update on this topic.
Congrats for doing the right thing here – better late than never. I suspect the other guilty party in this mess will not take the high road, but perhaps he will surprise us all. As for the restaurant thing, I do think if you’re going to call out a place for bombing an inspection (which I applaud you for doing), you should also report their score on the follow-up inspection.
Who is the world would think FoodieBoodia is a credible source? And you actually HAVE an editorial policy?
Never rely on a blog run by an alcoholic trust fund baby with zero food industry experience or a real job for your info.
“an alcoholic trust fund baby with zero food industry experience or a real job” makes for fabulously snarky comments though 🙂
hi everyone (re: health inspections)- here’s why we won’t be posting passing restaurant health re-inspections:
http://wnatl.com/g1xF7M
–cjs
“We”… as in “you”? Hahahahahahahaha
I agree with @Baron.