On NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, Scott Simon interviewed Gilbert Cranberg, author of an short opinion piece in the Columbia Journalism Review on the need for the press to stop simply telling people what politicians or political organizations are saying and to actually verify their facts. Cranberg’s view of the current situation was that (apropos of a verifiably-correct John Kerry campaign claim that factcheck.org falsely called untrue):
If you have a political candidate making factually wrong statements, I call that the…the Wernher von Braun School of Journalism Ethics: “You know, we send up the lies and wherever they land, that’s somebody else’s problem.” No, it is not somebody else’s problem.