Regret the Error

Thanks for being a regular reader. You can check out the award-winning Regret the Error book here.

Allan Britnell, a Canadian freelance writer and fact-checker, has written an article suggesting that magazines should make a point of telling readers about their dedication to fact checking. Writing for Masthead Online, a website that reports on the Canadian magazine industry, Britnell proposes “an industry-wide campaign to promote fact checking” to readers:

One of the issues facing our industry is how to justify our relevance with a media-saturated audience that, increasingly, has grown up never having had to pay for content (music, movies, or reading material)… We – or at least, some of us – already have a built-in credibility process. Let’s let our readers know about it. To my mind, having the time to fact-check copy (and, of course, actually making the effort to do it) could be what makes magazines worth paying for, even when everyone else is giving away their content for free.
I propose an industry-wide campaign to promote fact checking. In short, we’d be letting readers know that because it’s been cross-checked, the content of a magazine is likely more reliable than what they’ll find in most websites, newspapers, or books.
The cornerstone of the campaign would be a check-mark logo that participating magazines could put on their covers (along the lines of Magazines Canada’s “Genuine Canadian Magazine” icon). A coordinated campaign of house ads, perhaps under the tagline, “We only write what’s right,” would explain in more detail what the logo – and fact checking – means. To promote the campaign’s launch, a coinciding series of editorials could further explain the process, and mention the names of other participating publications.

Magazines that have a strict fact checking process should definitely do more to communicate the value of this layer of verification. However, any “industry-wide campaign to promote fact checking” would have to begin as a campaign aimed at magazines. The reality is that fact checkers are a dying breed.

Only a handful of Canadian magazines use them, and checkers are being culled at an alarming rate in the United States. When layoffs hit, fact checkers are among the first to go. The magazine industry won’t be able to launch a credible campaign aimed at consumers unless it does a better job of ensuring that fact checking doesn’t become a luxury that only the biggest and best-funded magazines can afford.

To be fair, Britnell acknowledges that magazines aren’t pursuing a uniform checking process:

Obviously, a set of standards would need to be established. Does double-checking the spelling of source names and spot-checking the odd factoid count? To me, no. I would argue that substantively checking all editorial content should be the benchmark…

That’s a fair benchmark, but it will take a lot of work to make a significant number of magazines meet the standard.

While researching a chapter about fact-checking for the Regret the Error book, it became clear that I would have to dedicate just as many words to the demise of checking as I would to telling its history and sharing amusing anecdotes about checkers who went far beyond the call of duty. In the end, the chapter was called “THE BIRTH (AND SLOW DEATH) OF MAGAZINE FACT CHECKING.”

Here’s one relevant passage:

Magazines have always billed themselves as an authoritative voice. These days, that kind of quality is even more important, if only to cut through the massive daily assault of information and misinformation… If magazines do manage to hang on to rigorous fact checking, despite the time and expense involved, they’ll have a fighting chance of providing that voice. Readers, who show an almost filial loyalty to their favorite mags, deserve no less.
In today’s media environment it seems almost negligent for a magazine to eliminate its fact-checking department.

And here’s another to help remind us of the importance of fact-checking:

In September 1997, Canadian Business moved from a monthly schedule to publishing every two weeks. With its increased frequency, the magazine attempted to introduce a light check: Only things such as names and dates would be checked in every piece. The light check lasted only a few weeks before the magazine went back to the old system.
“They had this really stupid idea,” Pat Ireland, an experienced copy editor and checker at Canadian Business, said after the episode. “The editors would supposedly go over what needed checking and they’d mark it for you. Well, they never did, and editors, in my experience, don’t have any idea of what should be checked. You check everything. You never know what you’re leaving out.”
The magazine’s decision to bring back a full fact-check paid dividends at the 2006 Canadian National Magazine Awards. “I want to take a moment to acknowledge some people in the business who don’t get enough credit,” said Canadian Business staffer Matthew McClearn as he stood onstage to accept his gold medal for investigative reporting. “We call them associate editors at Canadian Business. You probably know them as fact checkers.”

Interestingly, the story of Canadian Business’ brief flirtation with the “light check” first appeared in Masthead.