Paper of Record?
About a month ago we screened our film “Battle for Brooklyn” in Bellingham Washington. After the film I mentioned to people that they could support the film by writing reviews on the NY Times readers review section. At that point we had 12 powerfully positive reviews and a five star rating (based on 84 votes). A couple of days later I checked to see if anyone had written a review. There was a new review, but the site now said that the film had 29 ratings and a 1 star. Obviously something was wrong.
I contacted a friend at the NY Times to see if he could help. He got the run around for a few days, but was finally told that it was a data issue. Apparently, when they ported the data from one place to another it went cockeyed. At this point I wrote to the film editor, who had been contacted by my friend about the problem. I asked, if they couldn’t fix the data right away, that they make a note on the page to let people know that the data was inaccurate. I was told it was “out of their hands.” Apparently its a “product development” issue.
I understand that data problems happen. However, once the data is published, it becomes an editorial problem. In the age of crowd sourced information, where does responsibility for erroneous information lie? Everyone who has ever commented on a NY Times story, or blog post, knows that the comments are moderated. Sometimes it takes quite some time for comments (or reviews) to appear. Clearly the Times is concerned with making sure that all comments or reviews are held to certain standards.
After three weeks of waiting for the problem to be fixed, I finally contacted the public editor. I was told that they would look into it. That was one week ago. I am sending this note to the public editor with a very sincere question, “If the data on the Times’s website is wrong, and the Times knows that it is wrong, does the Times have an editorial responsibility to acknowledge this editorially. The Times knows the data is wrong, and has known for a month. If it has been wrong for a month what kind of correction/acknowledgement is needed? What is the proper protocol in this situation?”
It would be less of a problem if the film wasn’t playing 5 times in NYC this week. Frankly, I’m not holding my breath.
{to be clear- we don’t believe this is a conspiracy based around our film- there are many other films that have also been negatively affected by this problem- which makes it even more urgent that the Times pay attention to this problem}
Here is the clearly wrong listing for Page One- about the NY Times
UPDATE: Monday Nov 7- still no change- noticed that all of the earlier reviews lost their ratings- which probably means they have a rating of zero- which is why it now reads 1.5 - still no word from the public editor.
