A blue hummingbird flies near a flower in a park in New Delhi on Thursday. There are more than 2000 species of birds in the vast Indian subcontinent. Until 1991, India was one of the largest exporters of wild birds to international bird markets ? Reuters
Two years ago, in response to that caption and this picture, I penned this missive to Reuters.
“You know, I can forgive Reuters the little things, like their bias, slanted reporting and Anti-Semitism.
But a man can only be pushed so far, can only take so much before he has to stand up and be counted, to raise his voice and join the chorus of excoriation.
I am that man. This is that time.
And this is what I have to say to Reuters;
Hummingbirds only occur in the western hemisphere, you dolts.”
Has Reuters learned anything in the years subsequent?
Hell no.
A blue hummingbird sits near a flower in a park on the outskirts of New Delhi May 12, 2005. There are more than 2,000 species of birds in the vast Indian sub-continent. Until 1991, India was one of the largest exporters of wild birds to international bird markets. REUTERS/Kamal Kishore
I hope whoever rewrote the caption charged Reuters for a whole days work. It’s obviously a laboring away in the salt mines environment there.
Now, just to reiterate, here’s what the fine people at wwfindia have to say about hummingbirds.
Hummingbirds are only found in the Americas, from southern Canada and Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, including the West Indies. The Black-chinned Hummingbird is the most common species in the western United States and Canada. Only the Ruby-throated Hummingbird breeds in eastern North America, but occasional members of other hummingbird species (”accidentals” in birding jargon) are seen in the east of North America, sometimes as vagrants from Cuba or the Bahamas.
…..only found in the Americas.
only found in the Americas
ONLY FOUND IN THE AMERICAS, YOU FROG DIMWITS!!!!
Ahem.
Reuters: Chock full of idiots.
As I have noted, once or twice before;
Sweating the small stuff is the essence of reporting. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a post turn ninety degrees in my head due to a single fact check that didn’t turn up the expected result, becoming something else entirely.
Other times a post has turned because simple curiosity led me down a path I didn’t expect, usually due to an attempt to illuminate some dark corner only distantly related to the theme at hand.
Both of the above boil down to two principles.
1. Fact check everything.
2. Know your story
If the principles sound journalistic, it’s because they are. Any blogger that has every attempted to do anything beyond diary entries or rants is a journalist, they’re just not getting paid to be one.
It’s not that I always adhere to the above rules, but I try to keep them in mind. It’s also been my experience that each and every time I slap something together that violates or ignores one of the above, I get corrected by a reader.
And each and every time, I curse like a sailor. I frigging hate being corrected.
Now imagine what the curses would sound like if I was getting paid to do this. When nothing is on the line other than my somewhat shaky reputation, it’s annoying but no big deal. If my job was on the line, corrections would be a much bigger deal.
Now, given that, why do the news services keep producing mistakes?
The answer seems obvious to me; journalistic mistakes, even ones that end up killing people, normally carry no consequences whatsoever for those who commit them, so they continue to happen. Obviously whatever dolt is in charge of the nature photographs at Reuters has blissfully continued his drunken stumble down the career path over the last two years without consequence, save that, for me, at least, every story with a Reuters byline goes into a mental trash bin. Reuters does not care enough to get the details straight, so there’s no point in trusting in anything their stories say.
Postscript: For those who care about such things, the bird Reuters mistakenly insists is a blue hummingbird is most likely a Purple Sunbird. What it’s not, what it can never be, even in the fevered imagination of a senior Reuters editor, is a “blue hummingbird,” not even if they moved the location of the picture to the correct hemisphere. There’s no such beast.
PPS: Those who found the above diverting may wish to peruse an earlier Adventure in Journalism; Show Us Your Tits!
