Bullies Like BullyingHow did a nonstory based on an iffy study end up in a New York Times blog?

(Continued from page 1)

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In this case, I'm less interested in the science than the lamebrained science journalism. The New York Times did something worse than covering a nonstory—it shamelessly promoted it. Take another look at Parker-Pope's write-up, and now read the University of Chicago press release that went out the week before. Three entire paragraphs (including an extended quote) make it from the release into the six-paragraph Times post, virtually unchanged. The rest is paraphrase.

It's no wonder she missed some potential flaws in the bullying study. A quick look through the archives suggests that Parker-Pope makes a regular practice of touching up university-wire stories without any discernable reporting of her own. On Oct. 29, she posted on a study of stress and decision-making in seniors. The material was reworded slightly, but all of it—including the quotes—had previously appeared in a USC press release. In this piece from Nov. 4 on a study showing that children are safest under their grandparents' care, she acknowledges pulling a quote from a Johns Hopkins release but never acknowledges that the rest of the information she cites also appears in that release. Same goes for a Nov. 10 post on how drivers respond to speed limits, which consists entirely of information that appeared in a release from the Purdue University news service.

I don't mean to suggest it's a crime to take material from a press release. But it's certainly lazy, and there's every reason to believe that Parker-Pope knows better. In her short tenure at Well (and in her previous gigs), she's shown a knack for smart and skeptical science coverage: Posting on a study of how television affects teen pregnancy rates, she goes out of her way to complicate the sexed-up angle from the press release. Indeed, two years ago, she informed the Columbia Journalism Review that, "as reporters, we should never take anything at face value. I think a mistake that a lot of people might make is to read the press release. I almost never read the press release."

Back in 2006, Parker-Pope was speaking as a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, not as the New York Times blogger she is today. Reached by phone, she appeared to temper her previous statements: "The blog is providing information from a variety of sources, and sometimes those include press releases. … I try to make that clear and also to provide links to the original [journal] articles so the readers have all the information." She professes a deep commitment to transparency, both online and in print: "I really believe that if we're quoting from a press release, we have to tell readers that." She does acknowledge that the "bully" post, at least, was an oversight: "This one, I'm kicking myself."

(After our conversation, Parker-Pope adjusted the posts on bullies and decision-making in seniors by adding the phrase "in a press release" to the paragraphs in which the study authors are quoted. She doesn't attribute any of the other material in the posts, nor does she flag her changes for readers.)

The Times has no official policy on using press releases, but spokeswoman Catherine Mathis says in an e-mail that it "would not meet our standard" to base an entire article on one without attribution to a company or organization. A draft set of guidelines for the newspaper's blogs includes the following dictum: "In the integrated newsroom, standards online and print are the same. What's different in a blog is voice and tone." That said, someone who attended a Times staff meeting in May of 2007 did tell Gawker that executive editor Bill Keller had warned, "We can't let our reverence for quality become a straitjacket in new media."

I can certainly appreciate the time pressures faced by Web journalists, and I'm OK with the idea that standards might be a smidge lower online. (You may have heard that Slate doesn't do as much fact-checking as The New Yorker.) But at the risk of sounding like one of those straitjacketed print-media types, that extra leeway shouldn't preclude a reporter from performing her most basic responsibilities. Like calling your own sources. Or writing your own copy.

There are better ways for a newspaper to peddle canned content. On Nov. 7, Washingtonpost.com ran an unbylined version of the bullying story straight off the PR wire; there, at least, the source was disclosed clearly at the bottom of the page. (Which reminds me: The Washington Post Co. pays my salary.) That's better than a passing attribution of a single quote. Better still would be a clearly marked link to the original press release. If staff cuts on the science desks have made this kind of journalism into a necessary evil, readers should be kept informed.

I'd venture to say that if we slid Tara Parker-Pope into a scanner, we'd discover she has some sympathy for my point of view. ("In a chilling finding, the researchers found reporters appear to enjoy reporting …") Here's another of her aphorisms from the CJR interview: "Just because we have 15 seconds," she says, "or 800 words or whatever the amount of time we have to tell our story, we still have to get it right." So true.

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Daniel Engber is a senior editor at Slate. He can be reached at .

Photograph of a bullying child by Getty Creative.

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