Check out this exchange where a Fletcher School graduate tries to correct a Reuters fact-blunder in a story, Reuters putting the School as part of Boston University (it in fact is part of Tufts University).

What’s interesting is this part of their explanation:

Regarding your request, please see the resolution from our Editorial team:

After doing our research we got in touch with our correspondent and they (sic) informed us: There are always conflicting facts about people. We have just looked again at this and found a website ‘Global Business Leaders’ 

Three points here.

First, the reply from the Reuters ‘correspondent’ seems unable to distinguish between ‘Boston’ and ‘Boston University’.

Second, Reuters is relying on this correspondent who by his/her own admission is relying on … da-dah … a website to produce definitive information!

In other words, Reuters is employing someone too stupid or too lazy to do some simple digging and cross-checking, and eg look at the FSLD or BU websites which might reasonably be taken as giving a clear steer here. Let alone make a telphone call or two.

Third, we all have no way of knowing whether this blithering idle chump is behind more Reuters stories.

Embarrassingly poor.

Next time you hear a journalist making snooty remarks about bloggers, remember that a journalist these days is just another drone peering at a computer screen – and even at Reuters a journalist may be too incompetent to get even basic things right – or (far worse) even to care whether they’re right or wrong.

Oh, and talking of the high standards of modern journalism, the Johann Hari plagiarism saga is beyond magnificent. The gift that keeps on giving.