The Ross Barkan Reckoning
In May, when New York Magazine first began examining Ross Barkan’s work, the 36-year-old columnist was defiant. He accused an NPR journalist, Bobby Allyn, who suggested his reporting had been plagiarized by Barkan, of engaging in “character assassination.” He said the scrutiny was “all quite ridiculous.” And he publicly stood by his work.
Three months later, his tone had changed. On Wednesday, he apologized for failing to properly attribute the work of other journalists at New York Magazine, which found 67 instances of improper “attribution of language, information, or sourcing,” even as it noted that his errors weren’t deliberate. “I truly am sorry for the mistakes I made,” Barkan wrote in a statement posted on social media. “None of them, genuinely, were willful or intentional.”
But for Barkan, the professional dominoes have continued to fall in the days since New York Magazine announced the results of its review of Barkan’s work, which resulted in the publication cutting ties with the columnist entirely and updating dozens of pieces with proper attribution and sourcing. And the fallout has extended well beyond the Vox Media publication. Status has learned…
Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity
In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug.
Fact-checking and its detractors
Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors
Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.