I came across two notable articles that both offer guidance on how journalists should handle (and debunk) misinformation provided by sources. Both cited a recent ad from the Mitt Romney campaign that included a falsehood. So, as the story from Nieman Watchdog Project asks, “When candidates lie, what’s a political reporter to do?” From Dan [...]
My main job at the moment is as editorial director of OpenFile, an online news organization operating in six Canadian cities. Late yesterday afternoon, I spent about an hour helping draft a blog post that would offer an apology and explanation for readers about why we had to remove a story just a few minutes [...]
When should a news organization correct or remove archival content? Where should online corrections be placed? How should readers be encouraged to report mistakes and request corrections? These are some of the common questions I’m asked about online corrections. I think a lot of news organizations continue to struggle with them, and to look for [...]
The Los Angeles Times has been hearing complaints from readers about typos and grammatical errors. The feedback was mentioned in this piece. Just about every newspaper these days gets complaints of that nature, and it’s good that readers speak up. But what’s notable about the Times story is the information offered up in response by [...]
I recently blogged the fact that the Daily Mail, a paper that has long distinguished itself by issuing remarkable apologies for highly questionable reporting, decided to introduce a regular corrections column. We’re a couple of weeks into it and, as expected, there have been some gems. It’s a positive move for the paper to standardize [...]
Patrick LaForge’s official title at the New York Times is editor of news presentation. In a practical sense, he oversees the copy desks at the paper. (His Twitter account is also worth a follow.) I met LaForge in person in the spring when I gave an error prevention workshop at the Times. (I offered to [...]
I’m joining with Reuters’ Jack Shafer and Mallary Tenore of Poynter today at 12:30 p.m. ET to do a live chat about trust and accuracy. Go here to join in, make comments and ask questions. Here’s more about the chat: A Pew study released last week found that only 25 percent of the news consumers [...]
Karen Rothmyer, public editor of the Star of Nairobi, Kenya, dedicated a recent column to the issue of corrections. Specifically, the issue is that her paper seems to prefer to not publish them. It sometimes publishes a corrective article when a mistake is made, or it will occasionally go into online articles and scrub away [...]
A variety of media folks got caught up in a false rumor today, after word began to spread that CNN had suspended Piers Morgan. Martin Bryant has a good roundup at the Next Web: The latest example of ‘think before you retweet’ emerged today when a false rumor spread like wildfire that British journalist and [...]
It is hard to describe the interview that took place on KQED’s Forum show on May 25, 2011, as anything other than a train wreck. Osama bin Laden was dead, and Frank Lindh — father of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" — had been invited on to discuss a New York Times op-ed piece [...]
The New York Times has a new online corrections page. For several years the page (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/corrections/index.html) was updated to show only that day’s corrections. Now it links to the seven most recent days of corrections: It also has a list of recently corrected articles: Both these things are improvements. The links to recent days of [...]
This post, “There’s No Problem!’ Newsrooms in Denial About Rampant Errors,” from MediaBugs executive director Scott Rosenberg is in reply to this post from Jonathan Stray. Together, they encompass much of the information you need to get a good understanding of newspaper accuracy and some of the failures of correction. So not just worth reading [...]
A recent edition of my weekly column for Columbia Journalism Review featured a Q&A with PCC director Stephen Abell. He told me that the organization recently set up a working group to come up with guidance regarding online corrections and apologies. The guidelines were published today, and here are the notable sections: The starting point [...]
In his final column, outgoing Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander writes that the Post … has become riddled with typos, grammatical mistakes and intolerable "small" factual errors that erode credibility. Local news coverage, once robust, has withered. The Post often trails the competition on stories. The excessive use of anonymous sources has expanded into blogs. [...]
I’ve since learned what real, excruciating pain NPR triggered with its false news report that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had died, which was repeated on npr.org, e-mail alerts, Twitter and picked up by other news organizations. NPR correspondent Ted Robbins is based in Tucson. He was at the scene Jan. 8 when his cell phone rang [...]
There has already been a lot of discussion and reporting about the mistakes made by various news organizations while reporting the horrific shooting that took place in Arizona on the weekend. (My headline on this post only mentions Rep. Giffords, but she is of course not the only victim.) As news — and errors — [...]
Last summer, two respected medical journalists — Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky — launched a lovely blog called Retraction Watch. It's dedicated to "Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process." I wrote about the site in my weekly CJR column and have been watching it highlight some notable and amusing retractions. This week [...]
Stinky Journalism noted an interesting article by the U.K.'s Press Gazette. It reported that the Press Complaints Commission, the self-regulatory body for U.K. media, will play a bigger role in determining where publications place corrections and apologies resulting from PCC findings. From the story: The committee that oversees the Editors' Code of Practice to which [...]
“We’ve seen the maturation of online journalism, but corrections and error reporting haven’t advanced at the same rate," said Silverman, whose blog Regret the Error focuses on corrections. “In the online environment, mistakes move much farther and faster. It’s extremely important we do our best to prevent and correct them. It’s just basic journalistic hygiene.” [...]
The news industry traditionally has been defensive when it comes to accepting content. Newsrooms are also conservative places when it comes to change. Too many don't want your feedback. In a print universe, hearing about a misspelling or grammatical error didn’t help a whole lot. The damage was already done. Other errors garnered corrections, which [...]
A recent Post story said that of the $1.3 million the D.C. Salvation Army collected during its annual Red Kettle fundraising drive last year, about $667,000 came from outside local Giant supermarkets. "That's a little less than half of the group's holiday total," The Post reported. "It's actually a little more than half," an annoyed [...]
The fact-checking explosion may have begun in 2004 after the media's initially flat-footed response to the attacks on Sen. John Kerry by the group that called itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (see Campaign Trail Veterans for Truth," December 2004/January 2005). But the just-completed 2010 election featured fact-checking on steroids. A bitterly divided electorate and [...]
After a few months of working together and lining up some partners, Scott Rosenberg of of MediaBugs and I today launched the Report an Error Alliance. This initiative aims to move news organizations of all shapes and sizes towards a common standard for online error reporting. The goal is to ensure more mistakes get corrected, [...]
On the Fourth of July, 2004, the daily newspaper of Lexington, Ky., issued an unusual correction. "It has come to the editor's attention," the notice began, "that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission." What I relish about this "correction" — which appeared on the front page and continued [...]
… Most newspapers have longstanding policies on how errors are corrected in print, but if you ask editors and reporters about online corrections in their own newsrooms, you likely will get as many answers as people you ask. … Mobile sites and apps for smartphones and devices like the iPad bring yet another dimension to [...]
