Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator

by Ryan Holiday

What do we get when iterative journalism fails? The answer is: a lot of pain and suffering for innocent people. Like when the blog Eater LA published a report from an anonymous reader stating that a popular Los Angeles wine bar not only had egregious health code violations, but also was advertising gourmet items on its menu while really serving generic substitutes. It was the kind of tip iterative publisher’s love to see, and Eater immediately put the story out there—before verifying it or contacting the restaurant: Besides not adhering to simple food saftey [sic] standards, such as soap, sanitizing, and throwing out chicken salad that’s 2 weeks old, 90% of all “fresh” menu items are cooked days beforehand and sit in the fridge. [emphasis theirs] Like so many iterative reports, it turned out to be wrong. Completely wrong. So Eater added an update that said the proprietors disputed the story. Yet the post—the disgusting hygiene allegations and the headline—remained the same. The post stayed up for people to read and comment on. Only after a second update—prompted by the threat of a lawsuit—did Eater begin to admit any wrongdoing. It said, in part: We ran this tip without contacting the owners of the restaurant, who have since refuted the tip in its entirety. We apologize to the owners of the restaurant, and our readers, for not investigating our source’s claims before airing them on the site. The resulting post didn’t rise to our standards, and we shouldn’t have published it.