New York Post Gaffe: If You’ve Seen One Johnson, You’ve Seen Them All
The New York Post did it again. This time they’ve removed a post (Desirée Rogers, forced from White House, now works for an Obama Nemesis) from the Page Six gossip section that linked Johnson Publishing CEO Desirée Rogers with former BET owner Bob Johnson. The Post called Rogers a traitor for taking employment with Johnson who was one of President Obama’s harshest critics during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Here’s the problem: Wrong Johnson. Really wrong Johnson.
Evidently the problem is with fact checking, right?
Five minutes and a Google search would have revealed that Bob Johnson campaigned for Hillary Clinton and in that capacity was critical of Barack Obama. A little trip to Johnson Publishing’s website would have disclosed that John H. Johnson founded the publishing company and his daughter Linda serves as chairman. And one last search to Bob Johnson’s website would bring it all home: He owns the RLJ Companies and has never been affiliated with the Chicago media Johnsons.
They are not related, but then again they’re not related to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical family but they didn’t confuse Bob with any of those Johnsons.
In the past two weeks, we’ve seen a lot of racial gaffes in traditional and new media from the Dr. Laura “N-word” debacle to the Slate article questioning the so-called “black tag” on Twitter. Dr. Laura immediately issued an apology to her credit and linked to it from her website.
I find it ominous and lacking editorial integrity on the part of The Post for removing the item from their website when a simple editorial correction would have sufficed. Misinformation spreads like wildfire on the Internet and the omission of a correction makes The Post complicit in perpetuating a stereotype by sweeping their error under a rug.
But then again this is the company that confused the president with a chimp.
Category: black media, Featured | Tags: BET, bob johnson, Desiree Rogers, ebony, Linda Johnson, New York Post
About the Author Managing Editor. Blogger. Consultant. Nerd who likes it behind the scenes.
See all posts by Robin Caldwell.
Epic gaffe. Shocking fact checking.
Thank you, Sherri. I agree, making the post go poof is irresponsible. Digital, in my most humble opinion, should be more diligent in presenting the facts.
Great post Robin. It's inevitable that a publication will make a mistake, but part and parcel of that is owning up to the mistake and endeavoring to improve upon the mistake. Trying to brush it under the rug doesn't do anyone any good.
As a long time New Yorker and veteran journalist, I've always believed that the most dangerous thing about the New York Post is not racism, but bad journalism. The same was demonstrated by FOX News with the Shirley Sherrod fiasco.