An antique door knocker at the Mumford River Masonic Lodge in Douglas, Mass.
Photo by Svadilfari. Published under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.
Photo by Svadilfari. Published under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.
To the editors of Ideas & Discoveries:
I recently purchased your pilot issue (February 2011), and saw the page on which you asked to hear your readers' "likes and dislikes" of the new magazine. I visited your website, and filled out the survey available there.
But I felt that more needs to be said, especially after reading the dubiously under-sourced feature article titled, "Freemasons: History's Secret World Government."
The article suffers from a litany of serious shortcomings in journalistic standards and basic due diligence that utterly undermine the entire piece's credibility.
I recently purchased your pilot issue (February 2011), and saw the page on which you asked to hear your readers' "likes and dislikes" of the new magazine. I visited your website, and filled out the survey available there.
But I felt that more needs to be said, especially after reading the dubiously under-sourced feature article titled, "Freemasons: History's Secret World Government."
The article suffers from a litany of serious shortcomings in journalistic standards and basic due diligence that utterly undermine the entire piece's credibility.
Three problems in particular caught my attention:
1. The author is not listed, nor is any information given about her/him. It's not just a point of pride for a writer to have her or his moniker under a headline; it's also a vital reference for the reader. This article is ostensibly about history. Is the author an expert historian in this field - or a historian at all? Is she or he a vetted journalist who covers this field? There's no way to tell.
The reader's lack of knowledge about who wrote the article becomes even more pertinent given the next shortcoming, which is that:
2. The article contains few cited sources or quotes. A journalist is supposed to make the sources - primary documents and interviews - the backbone of the story. Source citation is the basis of a story's credibility. It tells the reader, "Hey, I didn't just make all this stuff up. Here's where I got it from, so you can check for yourself."
Vague references to unnamed "journalists" or "researchers" is only allowable if a fact is tangential to the article's focus. But the "Freemasons" article uses these kinds of unidentified sources to posit central arguments, such as when it points out that "more reports are being published" about the devious plans of secret societies. No examples of these reports are given; no quotes, and no mention of whether any of them are reliable.
More often, "facts" are simply presented without any reference to a source whatsoever. According to the article, 33% of the rebels who fought in the American Revolution were Freemasons. But where did this statistic come from? Certainly not the Census Bureau.
In another section the author writes, "Investigations reveal that many of [Italian Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi's policies correspond to the secret society's objectives." No hint is given about what the objectives were, how they were discovered, how they relate to any policies, or even who conducted the supposed "investigations."
The only person quoted directly in the entire article is Jim Marrs, who is variously identified as an "expert on secret societies" and a "researcher." A simple Google Scholar search reveals not one piece of recognized academic writing under his name. Marrs is, in fact, an ex-journalist who now espouses belief in a whole host of conspiracies, from alien abductions to 9/11 denial.
The author’s B.S. detector must not be very sensitive if he or she considers Marrs to be engaged in legitimate research. But that wouldn’t be quite as bad if not for the third shortcoming, which is that:
3. Although the article makes highly controversial claims, it offers practically no dissenting views.
The author’s wording of the article makes it obvious that his or her opinion is that the Freemasons exert a great deal of power and influence (perhaps in a negative fashion) on society. At one point, for instance, the article states (without citing a source) that “Besides Washington, there have been at least 11 U.S. presidents who belonged either to a Masonic Lodge or an affiliated organization.”
If 12 presidents were Freemasons, then 31 were not (43 men have been president: Grover Cleveland is typically counted twice, which is why Barrack Obama is president number 44). A sizeable majority therefore were not initiates.
In a similar fashion, the author mentions that “nine of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence...are openly members of Masonic Lodges, and another five have close ties to a lodge.” If, as the article says, Freemasons really did constitute one third of the rebels at the time of the Revolutionary War, then they made a terrible showing at the signing. Out of 56, they would have represented less than one sixth of the signers - and still only one quarter if you count outside “ties.”
Marr’s statements about cover-ups and the New World Order go unopposed, without the slightest attempt at a counterargument. The author doesn’t even bother at any point to bring in a token skeptic or to propose another perspective. Fringe conspiracy theories are portrayed as commonly accepted knowledge - and all this without a trace of reference.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. I haven’t addressed the veracity of the article, despite the fact that practically every paragraph makes unsubstantiated claims that arouse my suspicions.
To be frank, I don’t recall the last time I saw such sloppy journalism printed on such glossy paper. After reading this one article, I decided not to read any of the others. If the standards are as low as they seem, I don’t feel I can trust any of the content.
My likes are easy to enumerate. I like the concept of Ideas & Discoveries; judging by the design and content, it appears to be intended for a similar audience as "academic" magazines, such as Scientific American and National Geographic (I base this assessment in part on several of the survey's questions, in which the magazine is grouped with these and other popular science periodicals).
I wish there were more publications that provided education on a range of academic subjects that was accessible to general audiences. Your magazine could be among them, too, if it adopted some of the normal practices for maintaining journalistic integrity and accountability.
Until you tighten your editorial guidelines, however, I wouldn’t expect to reach anywhere near that level of credibility. Right now, a place on the rack closer to Weekly World News or the National Enquirer seems more appropriate.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
- Brandon T. Bisceglia.
