CNET News quoted Poynter’s Roy Peter Clark in a story about fraud in journalism:
“Conflicts of interest are taboo at most traditional news organizations, and any writer who doesn’t reveal such conflicts to readers is begging for a pink slip.
“Ugly stuff. But before journalists start wringing their hands over the dangers that freelance writers, bloggers, and self-publishing have wrought upon their industry, it may be good to remember that liars, sneaks, plagiarists, self-aggrandizers, and incompetents have hardly been introduced to journalism by the Internet. In fact, they’re an old tradition.
‘These kinds of examples of journalism malpractice have their roots in much older forms of news and media,’ said Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a leading U.S. journalism school. ‘The only thing that seems new here are the forms in which these transgressions are expressed…The classic forms of journalistic malpractice, going back decades, are making stuff up, ripping other writers off, and the third is peddling special interests without letting the reader know. They continue to exist to this day, and in all forms.’ “
