The media, again. This time distorting dinosaurs up front.

My friend and colleague Matt Wedel is not happy. And it looks like he has every right to be since while being interviewed for a TV documentary he talked about the long discredited ‘second brain’ thing in dinosaurs. However come broadcast, the edit makes it appear as if he says this is correct. When he complains, the company admits the ‘error’ without apology or any real explanation.

Of the many, many, many times I have lambasted various media elements for general distortion and misunderstanding, I have always been able to fall back on allowing them a large measure of ignorance and innocent, (if unhelpful, unwarranted and often inexcusable) incompetence and lack of thoroughness. Here however it looks like they really knew what they were doing and did it anyway, with an on screen quote. This is very, very bad. And it’s very, very bad coming from a company who is getting expects to talk about their work. It’s bad enough when your quotes or press release or paper gets a bit mangled in translation for a short article in a newspaper but given the lengths Matt went to to explain his position and the issues at hand from people who need his help to make their TV show when they had months to prepare it, it’s rather worrying at best.

Anyway, go follow the links and read up on this, I’ll be watching with interest. For something lighter but equally relevant, try this little video about fact checking in the media (via Bad Science).

EDIT: Relatively happy ending here.

Share this Post