PressEthic

It happens… a journalist reports something inaccurately, other news outlets pick it up, and eventually the information is accepted as fact. Think WMDs or… Oreo cookies?

According to a Baltimore City Paper article by Gadi Dechter, the media played a little "whisper down the alley" with some info for the past three years:

Media reports of Oreo cookies employed as a racist taunt during a 2002 Maryland gubernatorial campaign debate have recently come under dispute. Now, the media that reported the story—in many instances without independent confirmation or transparent sourcing—is struggling to explain how a racially charged (and apparently controversial) claim by Republican politicians became an accepted fact in major newspapers across the country.

At issue is the question of whether Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is black, was pelted by, mocked with, or otherwise in the presence of Oreo cookies, which are white on the inside, at a raucous Baltimore debate between then-gubernatorial candidates Robert Ehrlich and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

It turns out, according to the article, that no one can be sure of exactly what happened at the event. Dechter reported that some people said that Oreos were thrown at Steele, and others said they did not see any Oreos at all. Yet, many news outlets picked up the story in various forms, and ran with it (check out the “Oreo-logy” at the end of Dechter’s article).

While I’m not surprised this happened, it did remind me just how important it is to confirm every detail of a story.