Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” approaches the issue by focusing on the actual meat quality and process, while Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” focuses on the brutal working environment and corruption behind the factories. Both authors attack the meat-packing industry for its corruption and abuse of both the animals and its workers. “The Jungle” generates a great deal of negative emotions based on the fact that people were being deceived into eating a mixture of spoiled meats, rats, poop, and a lot of other harmful things. However, “Fast Food Nation” makes its readers pity the abuse and chaos the factory workers had to endure. The workers, often times immigrants unable to speak for themselves, were made into machines. They were not properly insured and had to work until their bodies gave out.

While both authors write about many of the same things, their approach is very different. Sinclair decides to make a fictional novel based on fact, Schlosser interviews many of the workers and provides firsthand testimonies. Sinclair was quite successful in exposing the abuses, despite a bit of questionable credibility due to his work being a fictional novel. Schlosser was very successful in exposing abuse because his information was directly from the workers within the factories as well as his own tour of the factory.

Upton Sinclair, author of “The Jungle”, focuses more on the unethical way meat was handled in a factory in Chicago during the early 1900s. Any kind of meat could be used to make sausages no matter how it was taken care of. Old moldy meat that had fallen in dirt and sawdust on the floor was put into the grinding machine. Meat could have been sitting in rooms where rats would run on top of it. After the sausage was made, some of it would be smoked and labeled as special so it could be sold for 2¢ more a pound.

Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation”, focuses on the dangers of workers in a Colorado meat factory. They had to work in a very noisy area because of all the power tools running simultaneously, which would slice the meat. It was in a humid area, which would bring out all the horrid smells of dead animals. Workers were dressed in white coats to provide armor that is suppose to prevent cuts, but the tools were so sharp that they would easily puncture the suit and bare flesh.

Eric Schlosser is more trustworthy in his account because he visited a factory in Colorado and is giving a first person account of what hardships he saw the workers go through. Upton Sinclair wrote a fictionalized account based upon real dangers of eating meat from an industry by describing a made up family that worked in Chicago. His story is not as accurate because he does not provide a source for his information even though people knew what the meat-packing industry was all about.

Because of the era difference between The Jungle and Fast Food Nation, the efficacy of each book cannot truly be compared to that of the other. Both of these books do share a great number of similarities: Each describes the horrors of the meatpacking industry, tells of companies’ disregard for the well-being of employees, fits into the category of “muckraking journalism,” and utilizes powerful language to invoke emotional reactions from readers. Beyond that, however, the effectiveness of similar each work was mostly dependent upon the time in which it was published. While Fast Food Nation was released during the twenty-first century – long after the first muckraking piece was published – Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was among the first of its kind, giving it the added advantage of being utterly shocking to the stunned public.

It is interesting to note that The Jungle, though based on fact, was actually a fictional novel. Even so, after its publication in 1906, the American public began demanding federal regulation of the meatpacking industry; thanks to Sinclair’s efforts, legal provisions were passed that created what would ultimately become the Food and Drug Administration, which still exists today. When Fast Food Nation was published, however, the information it conveyed was hardly fresh news: The horrors of the meatpacking industry have long been documented by animal rights’ organizations, but the book still shocked with its accusations of employers’ neglect of human workers. Schlosser’s book did not have The Jungle’s advantage of being among the first of its kind, so while Sinclair will continue to be remembered as America’s first great muckraker, Eric Schlosser’s name may get lost in history, though he did the same type of work as his famous predecessor. If timelessness is a measure of a book’s effectiveness, then The Jungle certainly trumps Fast Food Nation. Aside from that, both of the works packed shock value that proved extremely valuable in raising awareness for abuses within the country’s most dangerous job, so within each book’s era, the influence that each had on its stunned readers was incredibly strong.

The two main mistakes that were made when reporting the Hilary Clinton email scandal were: not being accurate about the information that was provided and timeliness. The New York Times has a reputation in providing some of the best pieces to the public and its unfortunate that they were so focused on delivery that they were not careful in verifying information before releasing it. Another error that could have been rectified was how they handled updating the information. The information was simply edited but never announced that the information was not accurate.

In order to avoid these kind of errors, it is best in the future to take full responsibility of the accuracy and the sources used for their work.  Not only it is dangerous for the public, but for the person the news is about; in this case Hilary Clinton. This kind of inaccuracy could have put a damper on her career. The error needed to be edited right away, instead they took almost 48 hours to do so.

I consider myself to be only moderately politically-informed with regard to politics, but the fact that the Hillary Clinton email scandal remains even somewhat esoteric months after its release indicates that something was done wrong in its reporting, particularly the initial reporting of the story. When the New York Times first released the news, the scandal was made immediately popular by its subject’s presidential candidacy and status as the then-front runner of the Democratic Party. These facts awarded the story – which had still been in its early stages of development at the time – a measure of sensationalism, but it also made the story unusually heated and controversial. Members of the Republican Party seized the opportunity to exacerbate the issues that their archenemy was now facing, though the misfortunate (for Clinton, that is) timing of the story could not be blamed upon the reporters of the NYT. What could be blamed on the Times was their prioritizing with respect to the issue. In the case of the Clinton email scandal, journalists seemed to have forgotten that reporting and fiction writing are not synonymous, regardless of how much potential profit there is to be made. The Times’s desperation to publish the story/generate profit from its publication severely impaired the outlet’s typical dedication to accuracy, which subsequently led to a poorly-organized, incomprehensive article. Further, in yet another uncharacteristic move, the Times did not draw much attention to the edits made on the article until later. As a result, readers were left thinking that the original story remained true as they may have been unaware of the alterations made to the initial story.

There were a few things that could have been handled better regarding the release of this article. Unfortunately, the sources were annoynmous therefore we are unable to determine whether or not it can be deemed as reliable. The fact that these were very experienced reporters either means one of two things: the “reliable” source had a motive for giving false information, or the reporters were interested in making controversial headlines.

If they truly believed the information they recieved from their source was correct when they released the article, once the information was revised and corrected, there should have been a statement made, clarifying the situation. The story was not “developing” but it turned out to be a completely different situation all together.

Poor Hillary. She just can’t seem to shake this thing, can she?

Three things went wrong in the Times’ coverage of the Hillary email scandal:

1. The Times relied on an anonymous source.
2. The Times used the inaccurate and besmirching word “criminal.”
3. The Times failed to print a timely redaction.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the Times as much as the next guy. But seriously, NYT, get your act together! Everyone trusts the Times so much, they’ll surely come back to read the definitive report. It should takes its time and publish a reliable and well-written article when the story is certain and straightened out. There’s no need for such a big name in journalism to make such a rookie mistake. Rushing out to gather hasty facts and throwing together a story just to ride (and perpetuate) the buzz is unbecoming of the outlet, and I expected better of it.

Written by Aaron Mayer

The Times had published an inaccurate story regarding the Hillary Clinton email scandal.  The headline of the online article was “Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email.”  Later on, the Times no longer used the term “criminal inquiry” and instead said there was a “security referral.”  It was also revealed that the referral wasn’t directly looking into Hillary Clinton herself but investigating the improper handling of government information in general.

Making big corrections, especially with a story that blew up right away like this, is embarrassing for any news organization.  However, the Times also handled it incorrectly.  They should have corrected the article immediately or deleted it from their website.  They left the inaccurate story up, wrote and published a new one, and did not correct the original story until the following day.  They also should have clearly stated to the readers the errors that had been made.

In order to avoid a messy situation like this in the future, the Times should gather more sources, especially before using terms like “criminal.”  Gathering information from one political party makes the story too bias.  Officials from both parties should have been interviewed.  The Justice Department made a statement after the original story came out, making clear that it was not a criminal investigation, which did not reflect well on the Times.

“So if these allegations are so old, why are we just finding out about it now?”

That’s the big question as we delve into the dynamic of investigative journalism, and how it takes shape when tackling America’s biggest names about our most socially taboo topics.

Sometimes an important story can be dwarfed by larger events of global geopolitics or Beyoncé’s surprise album release, but sometimes, they simply  get lost amidst the noise and fade into obscurity. Such was the case in 2004 when the allegations first surfaced of Bill Cosby’s intentional drugging and molestation of several women he encountered over his decades in the entertainment industry. At first, it could be thought that such a national celebrity may be immune from such wrongdoing, and the allegations were mostly hot air, so nothing developed. Cosby continued his career for another 11 years. After crippling silence, the allegations rose to journalistic prominence once again after the concern over the omission of Cosby’s sexual past in a 500+ page biography was compounded by a viral video on social media of a stand up comic calling Cosby a rapist. Soon, several women who had never spoken out began to do so, emboldened by the collective societal shock of conscience.

Only after the silence was punctured did the media follow suit, but it’s supposed to be the other around. Journalists of all sorts must never let unanswered questions lie fallow, lest major stories like this one slip through the cracks.

Written by Aaron Mayer

This post was delayed due to a  drafting error in Blogs@Baruch. The author apologizes for the seeming irrelevance in relation to the neighboring articles.