Regret the Error

What follows are excerpts from a lengthly, informative coumn by Ted Vaden, the public editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, about a significant error than appeared in a prominent article about the ongoing Duke lacrosse team scandal. The story resulted in two corrections. The lengthier correction was published on the front page:

A front-page story Sunday misspelled the first name of a Durham police investigator. Her name is Michele Soucie.
******
This
report on the Durham lacrosse case Sunday contained an error involving
the timing of a discussion between District Attorney Mike Nifong and
Investigator Michelle Soucie.
On April 4, Nifong instructed
Soucie to nail down what the accuser in the case had done on the day
prior to the alleged rape. That was nearly two weeks before the first
two indictments in the case.
This error changes the implication
of the first five paragraphs of the story: that the conversation
between Nifong and Soucie was an example of the words and actions of
police and prosecutors outpacing the facts in the file.
The error
does not affect the accuracy of the remainder of the story, which
reported gaps between the prosecution’s words and its evidence.
We regret this error.

And now, the column:

It’s a reporter’s greatest fear. He has been working for a month on a
major investigative piece, part of the biggest ongoing local news story
of the year. It runs as the lead story on the Sunday front page. And
the key fact that begins the article is wrong.
News
& Observer investigative reporter Joseph Neff didn’t sleep at all
last Sunday night, after he learned of the error in his article
headlined, "Duke lacrosse files show gaps in DA’s case."
The opening paragraphs of the story said Durham District Attorney Mike
Nifong had proceeded with rape indictments against two lacrosse players
the same day he asked a police investigator to look into whether the
accuser’s injuries might have had causes other than the alleged rape.
That
information was wrong. Nifong actually had asked investigator Michele
Soucie for background information about the accuser on April 4, nearly
two weeks before the indictments, not on April 17, as the story said.
The N&O ran a front-page correction Tuesday that said, in part,
"This error changes the implications of the first five paragraphs of
the story: that the conversation between Nifong and Soucie was an
example of the words and actions of police and investigators outpacing
the facts in the file."…

"I’m not aware of an error like this in a story like this in my 20
years on the job," said Deputy Managing Editor Steve Riley, who as the
editor who handled the story took responsibility with Neff for the
mistake. "Certainly, it’s the most significant error that I’ve had a
part in."

At this point in the column, Vaden gives a detailed explanation of how the error occurred. Because this was an investigative piece,  it was given extra scrutiny and fact checking. Yet because it was written by one of the paper’s most respected reporters, editors also admit to reading it with an underlying assumption that the reporting was solid. The reporter is also quick to admit that he should have been the one to catch an error so early in the piece. This incident highlights the fact that fact checking should not be influenced by the byline on the piece. The process needs to check every fact, regardless of who wrote the piece. More form the column:

NEFF IS THE FIRST TO ACKNOWLEDGE that he should have caught the
error. There were "red flags all over the place," he said, including
other documents that would have called the April 17 date into question.
"If I had done a better job cross-referencing, I would have caught it,"
he said. Neff had spent the Friday before publication doing such
fact-checking.
The story was read by six editors, and none
challenged Neff on the chronology in the opening paragraphs. Riley did
review the documents used by Neff but did not notice the date
discrepancies.
Part of the reason Neff was not challenged more
closely is that he is one of The N&O’s best reporters, experienced
in criminal justice investigative reporting. "He’s a terrific reporter,
and I trusted him then," said Riley. "And I trust him now."
Melanie
Sill, The N&O’s executive editor, said she doesn’t think the case
indicates a flaw in the paper’s fact-checking system, but it will raise
consciousness going forward. "Editors will be more diligent about
talking to reporters about what they have fact-checked. Any error does
raise a question about your potential for errors."…

Vaden also does a good job of discussing the reaction received from readers, and he contacted two outside sources to comment on the paper’s handling of the matter:

…But there were some who questioned the handling of the error and the
correction. Eric David, a law student at UNC, said: "To say that an
error renders the ‘implication’ of the first five paragraphs of a story
obsolete, but ‘does not affect the accuracy of the remainder of the
story’ is just not acceptable. The story … was the implication. If
the implication underlying the story is false, the whole story is
false."
I asked two outside professionals for their perspectives.
Bob Steele, who teaches journalism ethics at the Poynter Institute in
Florida, said he thought the correction, which he read, should have
been more forthcoming. "If there was a mistake … I believe that the
transparency and accountability should have gone to greater length. To
not only say ‘we blew it,’ but to give readers information as to how
the mistake happened."
But Jean Folkerts, dean of journalism at
UNC-Chapel Hill, credited the paper for correcting the error quickly
and prominently. "I think that running the correction on the front page
the way you did was a good sign of honest journalism," she said.
"People are human. People make mistakes. I think the best way to deal
with that is to be honest about the mistake."

No one in the profession will argue against being honest about the mistake, but Bob Steele of Poynter makes a significant point about the need for explanation. Readers want to understand what happened, and it’s in the best interest of the paper to explain its policies and how they failed in this instance. Vaden’s column does a good job of this, but the correction must also offer context and explanation. Otherwise, people are left to make assumptions. That serves no one.

FINAL
THOUGHTS: I THINK THE ERROR WAS SUBSTANTIAL. It could at worst
undermine some readers’ confidence in the paper’s reporting of this
case and at the least contribute to a perception of journalistic
sloppiness. We don’t need either.
The paper should use the
incident as an opportunity to redouble its efforts to ensure reporting
accuracy — re-examining its fact-checking systems and holding sessions
with all staffers to emphasize accuracy fundamentals. That is done here
regularly, but not recently…

 Report an error