Open
Open: Under Discussion
Open: Responded to
Closed: Corrected
Closed: Withdrawn
Closed: Unresolved
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Bug #30099 
NPR calls a PR person a "sports reporter"
This bug appeared in a news report published by NPR on Apr 18, 2011 by NPR Staff.
View the original news report.
Bug Type: Other
Both on the air and on NPR.org, NPR's story describes a "robot" -- actually a piece of software -- "out-writing a sports reporter." The "sports reporter" buried the lede in a college baseball game story, not mentioning a perfect game until the last two grafs. The software led with it.
Except, as is clear from reading the piece, and as Poynter noted weeks ago, that piece wasn't journalism, it was P.R. The head of the George Washington University sports information office, which releaased the piece, told Poynter, “We’re in the business to promote our athletes and our team. We’re not claiming to be journalists ... We're not in the newspaper business." (Hat tip John Zhu.)
Response
King Kaufman has contacted NPR
Discussion Leave a comment
We've contacted NPR at their corrections email address seeking a response.
More background on this case from the aforementioned John Zhu, here:
http://www.john-zhu.com/blog/2011/04/17/stop-saying-the-robot-out-wrote-a-reporter/
Here's a note we posted on our site:
You're right, commenters: GWSports.com is the site of the George Washington University athletic department. We've changed the headline from "'Robot Journalist' Out-Writes Human Sports Reporter' because the original writer, while human, was not a sports reporter.
Thanks for spotting our error!
Rick
-- Rick Holter, Supervising Senior Editor, NPR
Thanks, Rick, for the quick response. A couple questions here, per NPR's corrections policy:
- You posted the above note in the comments section of the story page, but shouldn't NPR also post a correction notice of some kind atop the piece? (For example, your correction may not be seen by readers who choose to browse the comments by "oldest first," or who don't browse them at all, etc.)
- Will NPR be posting notice of this on its main corrections page? (Currently no mention there.)
- Will NPR also notify broadcast listeners of All Things Considered of the correction?
Thanks for changing the hed, but I don't think it's adequate. The new hed (Robot sportswriter outperforms human) now just implies that the human was a sportswriter. In fact, it's hard to imagine what else the human might be. Robot sportswriter outperforms human pilot? At what?
That's the thing. The human and robot were doing a different job. You're comparing apples to oranges. You could say the robot was better at its job than the human was at his/her PR job, since it was a lousy press release, but ... so? I would guess that on that day, almost all robots everywhere were better at their jobs than that flack was at his or her job. Kind of cherry picking to pick a really bad press release, even if you don't call it journalism, for comparison.
The whole idea behind the assignment of the story was wrong. The story's bad. You should admit that on the web and to your listeners on the air.
We've posted a correction on the story and on the npr.org corrections page. There's not a correction for the radio story, because it did not refer to the original writer as anything but a writer.
Thanks, Rick. We'll go ahead and close this out as corrected.