The New York Times says so? Huff Post? Me? Neither stories in the mainstream media nor the blawgosphere, and SJ in particular, tell it all. They can’t because of space and limited comprehension. I can’t because I don’t know anymore than what they say, unless I have the source materials.  This point was driven home  after my post about Jack McCullough, convicted 55 years after the murder of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph.

After checking to see where people came from who read my post, two sources sent a few people by, and I decided to check them out. 

Aside: For those of you who want other blawgers to know that you exist or have written something relating to what others are writing, links are an excellent method of letting others know. Most of us are curious to see where people come from, and are interested in learning about new neighbors in the blawgosphere. This is a great way to make that happen.

One, a board called Letters to the Editor, included this comment:

How do we know the NYTimes and Fox News are telling the whole story?  We don’t. We only know what they’re telling us.

Absolutely correct. although a bit ironic given that the sources reflect both ends of the news spectrum.  The point remains, however, that blawgers aren’t usually investigative journalists, lacking the time or ability to put a month or two into reading source materials, interviewing witnesses, observing trials and researching the issues. 

It’s not that it wouldn’t be nice to be able to do this, but we work for a living. Instead, we freeride off the efforts of reporters for sources that we consider sufficiently reliable. We link to them so you know where our information comes from, and the bias that our source brings to the table. But we are constrained to rely on sources, even if less than perfect.

People regularly send me emails with links to stories that are quite interesting, but the articles are so cursory that it’s impossible to rely on them. There’s a glaring hole in the story that can’t be filled, or a conclusion that is facially wrong. It can be infuriating, as the issue involved may be huge or the story otherwise outrageous, but there just isn’t enough to work with.  As much as it may capture my interest, it just doesn’t provide enough meat from a lawyer’s point of view to base an opinion.  And so the otherwise interesting story gets dumped.

Bear in mind that reporters are not usually lawyers. They include in their stories the information they deem sufficiently important to be worthy of the space, often because it makes a better story than dull details that are far more relevant and material.  They may have a working grasp of the context, but often little more. Like the rest of us, they use generalized assumptions to understand their material, and they maybe no better than the assumptions our clients bring to meetings.

Reporters often beef up the bona fides of their story by turning to “experts.” Often, the ‘expert” is either the first person who happens to pick up the phone, or the phone with the most easily digestible tagline for credibility. They ask a couple questions in the hope of getting a soundbite that fits neatly in their narrative. Tell them more than they want to know and they’ll interrupt you, mumbling something about deadlines.

You can’t blame reporters. Their job is to crank out articles at a pace that few could maintain. They have editor breathing down their backs and space limitations that would make me cry. They do their best.  But as anyone who has been on the other side of a high profile case will tell you, it’s invariably lacking. The hope is that it’s close enough that it isn’t fundamentally misleading. And that’s what the rest of us have to work with.

In a post at Defrosting Cold Cases, Vidocq received some comments providing background on the case that wasn’t touched in any of the articles.  After the fact, source material comes to light. This happens with unfortunate regularity, and I regularly get emails from the lawyers in the case providing additional insight and papers that weren’t available beforehand. Sometimes, these comes months, even years, later, and people beg me to read what they have and write more about it, whether to correct the earlier post or to further pursue their argument. 

Much of the time, the additional information is just gilding the lily, adding arguments or facts to a point already made to strengthen it.  Some of the time, it would require a dedication of many hours, if not days, just to figure out what they’re talking about.  The nature of blawging doesn’t often permit that level of dedication of time and resources, and while the post may be of monumental importance to the people involved, it’s not the center of my universe. I can’t give them what they want.

Sometimes, the amount of detail needed to fully appreciate the depth and scope of an issue, a story, would be worthy of a book, demanding a few years of effort to do it justice.  But this is blawging, and aside from those few who write vanity books under the belief that their angst is worthy of someone’s time and money.  The best I can hope for is to be prompt, as accurate as my source allows me to be and to provide some level of thoughtfulness that makes the time someone spends reading worthwhile.

But this isn’t the gospel.  Neither is the New York ‘Times nor Fox News.