This article has been updated, please scroll down the page to read the addition.

8:44am February 8 | Ever hear of City News Service? It bills itself as “America’s largest regional news service” and “the only source for up-to-the-minute news of Southern California, 24-hours every day, seven days a week.”

Yes, the grammatically incorrect hyphen between “24” and “hours” is how they write it. They also claim to be “[t]he only source for complete listings of scheduled next-day and next-week news events,” a sentence where the hyphens may be excusable but the logistically impossible claim is not.

Might it be true that “[t]he nation’s TV networks, major newspapers, local broadcasters and international media rely on City News Service for around-the-clock coverage of [Southern California] news”? I can’t say, though I do know that I became aware of them when I saw an article they just did that the Press-Telegram posted on its Website.

With the headline “Depressed man arrested after flipping truck at Rose Hills Cemetery,” the brief article tells of a man at a Whittier cemetery who pointed a gun at multiple people, including carjacking a pickup truck from a cemetery worker.

You should read this article, not because the story’s especially interesting, but because of the way it is written. That, and the fact that it was picked up as-is by at least one publication—one right here in our hometown—says something about the state of media right now.

The highlights:

  • The story is subtitled “Suspect held for psychiatric exam,” yet in the body it says only that “he was expected to be held for a 72-hour psychiatric evaluation” (emphasis added).
  • The story makes it clear the man pointed a gun at multiple people and stole a truck, yet says, “It was unclear what charges he might be booked for” (grammatical errors sic).
  • The story claims police “received a call from cemetery security guards […] about a depressed man,” as if they called police to report he was depressed and not that he threatened them with a gun.

All my life I’ve been hearing stories about the low reading level at which newspaper articles tend to be written, diatribes by pundits bemoaning the dumbing down of America, and so on. I don’t know how one determines that (for example) USA Today is written at a 10th-grade reading level (as claimed here), nor whether America is a dumber place than it was 40 years ago.

I do know that it’s a tough time for journalism, particularly for the print media. I’ve met people who have worked for the Press-Telegram, and I would have empathy for their struggles even if I didn’t have my first-hand experience with the very same struggles.

Nonetheless, I think we have every right to expect better than getting our news from news services that have trouble providing reporting even the simplest of facts with cogency and consistency. And perhaps it’s not too much to ask that while they’re at it they manage to observe basic grammatical conventions.

Call me a snob, if you like, but keep in mind that all of us—including our children—are influenced by our cultural milieu, which quite obviously includes news reportage and the written word. Don’t you want that influence to make us better, to lift us up rather than modeling the misuse of the English language and a lack of lucidity in reportage? Shouldn’t we set the bar higher rather than settling for wherever media feel they can get away with placing it?

Mistakes happen, even by the best writers and editors. And times are tough. But these facts don’t excuse everything. Sloppy is sloppy. We don’t need that here.

UPDATE 2:33pm Monday | Ever hear of Associated Press? Of course you have. They bill themselves as “the essential global news network,” and to be sure they are a staple of world journalism.

And yet only days after the above piece on a shoddy story by City News Service, we got a shoddy story by AP on what happened to the band Twin (whose arrival in the area and mission I wrote about here) when they hit the water Friday.

In that story, the anonymous AP writer, in the guise of what most people would call “journalistic objectivity,” puts forth inconsistency, half-truth, and skew. Among them:

  • The writer says the band was cited for “canoeing down the river,” then says they were cited for “trespassing.” I’m still trying to clear up exactly what they were cited for, but the ticket Twin received reads, “loitering in a riverbed.”
  • The story claims LAPD Lt. Brian Wendling says firefighters and police helped the band out of the river. That is false, and I’m still trying to find out if Wendling actually said this.
  • The dramatic closing line, “The river can be a death trap when it swells with runoff,” speaks for itself. But for those who don’t see how, consider how equally true it would have been for the author to write, “The river can be perfectly safe when it doesn’t swell with runoff.”

And of course you’ve heard of KCAL 9, the major TV station most directly associated with Long Beach. Well, their reportage of the story was even more shoddy:

  • They didn’t even get the type of boat right, saying the band used kayaks.
  • They said the band brought the “kayaks” from Winnipeg, which is simply false: they acquired both canoes here over the last couple of weeks.
  • They claim lead singer David Fort said Twin did this “just trying to promote their band.” As Fort will tell you, that is simply a lie.
  • They repeat the inaccurate claim that police and fire pulled the band from the river.

Impressively, all these mistakes occur in less than a minute of reportage.

Jokes aside, AP and KCAL have just given us a quick and dirty object lesson in why we should be careful of being seduced by the idea of journalistic objectivity. I appreciate them helping to make my original point. City News Service is hardly the only source feeding us information purported to be “just the facts” that quite clearly isn’t.

P.S. You say you want a good story on what happened once Twin hit the water? Your wish is my command. Give me a few days.