Hoyt’s column offers new information, such as how five different editors reviewed her story and missed the mistakes. This is a classic example of how easy it is for mistakes to end up in print. It doesn’t matter how many people look at an article; they have to know what they’re supposed to be looking for.

The most interesting revelation in Hoyt’s piece was that, after attention was drawn to Stanley’s errors in 2005, the Times introduced a program to increase the fact checking of her work:

For all her skills as a critic, Stanley was the cause of so many corrections in 2005 that she was assigned a single copy editor responsible for checking her facts. Her error rate dropped precipitously and stayed down after the editor was promoted and the arrangement was discontinued. Until the Cronkite errors, she was not even in the top 20 among reporters and editors most responsible for corrections this year. Now, she has jumped to No. 4 and will again get special editing attention.

The extra scrutiny helped. Then things regressed, and that’s the lesson here. The gap in the plan for “special editing attention” is that it doesn’t include a training component. Stanley could, with a little bit of effort, improve her level of accuracy. Additional oversight isn’t going to train her to be more accurate. It will make her more careful, but it won’t fix the source of the problem. Eventually she will stop receiving special attention and things will go back to the way they were.

It’s kind of a variation on the old “give a man a fish” saying: Give an error-prone reporter special editing attention and you’ll publish fewer of her errors. But train her how to be more accurate and she’ll make fewer errors. That’s a big difference.

I concluded my CJR column by writing that “whatever system [Stanley] has for checking her work isn’t sufficient. The same goes for how the copy desk is handling her articles. The Times can let her twist in the wind with errors like these, or realize this situation is hurting the organization and come up with a training program that helps her stop making simple factual errors at such an alarming rate.”

This is, as they say, a teachable moment. It’s an opportunity for the paper to create a newsroom-wide program that will help all reporters. After all, you can’t give everyone special editing attention. But you can teach good habits that prevent the need for special attention. Eliminate or at least reduce the errors at the source and suddenly there are less things that can slip through the cracks.

After my CJR column appeared online, I received an email from an editor asking me for some error-prevention advice. Here’s what I sent to him:

1. Self-Diagnose: Are you making or missing the same kinds of errors. Do you misspell names? Garble numbers? Etc. Take a month and track your mistakes. Write them down. Note how they happened and any other relevant information. At the end of the month, tally up your errors. Now you know your pain points. I recommend keeping an error journal; just create an Excel doc or Google Doc spreadsheet and keep track of your errors. This is hugely valuable data. (The Times has an internal errors database, so it already keeps some of this data.)

2. Create Good Habits: If you have a tendency to misspell names, then you need to start every interview by asking the person to spell their name. If, as an editor, you tend to overlook misspelled names, then the first thing you do with a new story is check the names. The key is to create habits/actions that are mapped to your mistakes. The best way to do this is to…

3. Use A Checklist: Whether you’re writing or editing, you should use a checklist to guide your fact checking process. I have a sample checklist available as a free download here. And if you need convincing, read this column about why checklists are so powerful.

I know one thing for sure: if Alessandra Stanley started using a checklist to review her work prior to sending it for editing, her level of accuracy would improve.

UPDATE August 3: Steven A. Smith has some good thoughts about this situation over on his blog. A sample:

Reporters with fact-error issues have to work a bit harder, have to develop personal double-checks that can be time-consuming and frustrating, especially on deadline. But that is the only way reporters can work themselves out of an accuracy funk. Some take on the challenge because of professional pride and a genuine desire to do their jobs as well as they can.

Others require a bigger stick. That’s just the truth of it.

I remember one reporter who worked on my regional staff at The Pioneer Press in St. Paul. He had experienced a terrible run of corrections, all the result of careless reporting practices. Working with him, we developed a series of steps he was urged to take before moving any story to his editors. Within days his desktop computer was covered in yellow sticky notes reminding him to check phone numbers and addresses, use the city directory, and so on. He took responsibility and his hard work produced results. His correction rate dropped dramatically and the new habits stuck with him.

But the reporter knew his job was on the line. ‘Fix it or lose it” was the message.

Was such a message delivered to Stanley at the time her editors developed a personalized editing program? If so, does the latest debacle mean she will lose her job? Should she lose her job?

Does “intellectual heft” in reporting compensate for inaccurate reporting?

The handbook is the guidance Reuters journalists live by — and we’re proud of it. Until now, it hasn’t been freely available to the public. In the early 1990s, a printed handbook was published and in 2006 the Reuters Foundation published a relatively short PDF online that gave some basic guidance to reporters. But it’s only now that we’re putting the full handbook online.

Several parts of the document address accuracy and corrections. Below are some of the more interesting parts.

Let’s start with "The 10 Absolutes of Reuters Journalism":

• Always hold accuracy sacrosanct
• Always correct an error openly
• Always strive for balance and freedom from bias
• Always reveal a conflict of interest to a manager
• Always respect privileged information
• Always protect their sources from the authorities
• Always guard against putting their opinion in a news story
• Never fabricate or plagiarise
• Never alter a still or moving image beyond the requirements of normal image enhancement
• Never pay for a story and never accept a bribe Link

Accuracy

The handbook has an entire sub-section devoted to accuracy. It offers guidance on dealing with sources, quotes, datelines and reporting rumors, amoung other topics. Here are a few of the "accuracy is" or "accuracy means" paragraphs:

Accuracy entails honesty in sourcing. Our reputation for that accuracy, and for freedom from bias, rests on the credibility of our sources. A Reuters journalist or camera is always the best source on a witnessed event. A named source is always preferable to an unnamed source. We should never deliberately mislead in our sourcing, quote a source saying one thing on the record and something contradictory on background, or cite sources in the plural when we have only one…

Accuracy means that our images and stories must reflect reality. It can be tempting for journalists to “hype” or sensationalise material, skewing the reality of the situation or misleading the reader or viewer into assumptions and impressions that are wrong and potentially harmful. A “flood” of immigrants, for example, may in reality be a relatively small number of people just as a “surge” in a stock price may be a quite modest rise. Stopping to think, and to discuss, how we use words leads to more precise journalism and also minimises the potential for harm. Similarly, no actions in visual journalism should be taken that add to or detract from the reality of images. In some circumstances, this may constitute fabrication and can cause serious damage to our reputation. Such actions may lead to disciplinary measures, including dismissal…

Accuracy is paramount in our use of datelines and bylines. Readers assume that the byline shows the writer was at the dateline. We should byline stories only from datelines where the writer (or the reporter being written up on a desk) was present. We may only use datelines where we have staff or freelancers on the spot from text, photos or TV and we are getting information from them on the ground. Reporters or freelancers who have contributed to a report should be included in an additional reporting line at the end of the story, giving their name and location…

Accuracy means proper attribution to the source of material that is not ours, whether in a story, a photograph or moving images. Our customers and the public rely on us to be honest about where material has originated. It allows them to assess the reliability…

As you can see, accuracy is a lot of things. Here’s some advice for dealing with sources:

• Cross-check information wherever possible. Two or more sources are better than one. In assessing information from unnamed sources, weigh the source’s track record, position and motive. Use your common sense. If it sounds wrong, check further.
• When doing initiative reporting, try to disprove as well as prove your story.
• Accuracy always comes first. It’s better to be late than wrong. Before pushing the button, think how you would withstand a challenge or a denial.
• Know your sources well. Consider carefully if the person you are communicating with is an imposter. Sources can provide information by whatever means available – telephone, in person, email, instant messaging, text message. But be aware that any communication can be interfered with.

Corrections & Erorrs

Reuters is transparent about errors. We rectify them promptly and clearly, whether in a story, a caption, a graphic or a script. We do not disguise or bury corrections in subsequent leads or stories. Our Corrections Policy is outlined in this Handbook. Link

The corrections policy contains a lot of technical information that’s specific to Reuters. However, the Handbook does include some good tips for avoiding errors. Some selected advice: 

• Confirm the day of the week and the date.
• Check all the numbers – do all the components add up to the total, do individual percentages add up to 100? Double check the period covered, conversions, whether the figure is up or down. Watch for confusion between millions and billions, misplaced decimal points, transposed conversions. Check share prices.
• Watch the spelling of proper names and ensure names are spelled consistently throughout the story.
  
• Ensure the story gives full company names, full and proper titles, and RICs in both the text and header field. Check that unfamiliar RICs and web site addresses mentioned in the story actually work.
  
• Check for legal dangers and balance. Does the story cast a slur on the good name of an individual, company or organisation? Does it expose anyone to ridicule, hatred or contempt? Is the story balanced and fair? Link

Dealing With Hoaxes

One section provides a bit of guidance related to hoaxes:

Do a reality check. Does this information fit within the bounds of what was expected? Any wild divergences are a clue you may be viewing information in the wrong context. Link

But here’s the best part — a guide to not getting fooled:

• Regard all information you receive by telephone as suspect unless you know the caller. If you do not know the caller, ask for the person’s full name, title and telephone number. Rather than take it for granted that the name and number are authentic, check such details independently though an organisation’s or company’s switchboard, online searches and other journalistic means.
• Telephone the person back. Get confirmation that it was indeed that person who telephoned you.
• Use the same precautions with unsolicited material received by e-mail, fax, instant message, other electronic means, SMS or in the mail.
• Be on guard against April Fool hoaxes on or around April 1 and all fantasies such as the birth of five-legged sheep, human pregnancies lasting 18 months, the marriage of 100-year-old sweethearts, perfect bridge hands and miracles.
• Follow the checking procedure even if it means delaying a story until you are sure of its accuracy.
• Use nothing found on the Internet, even from what appears to be a genuine corporate or institutional site, that is not sourced in a way that you can verify. Many corporate announcements and much economic data are now released online. Reporters need to be familiar with how news sources in their areas of expertise distribute information. Be suspicious of online information that is a complete surprise or appears in an unexpected place. Ask yourself if this is how an organisation normally delivers news? If in doubt confirm information by telephone or other means before you publish it. Capture, save and print a copy of a “screenshot” of the web page in question in order to defend us against charges of printing nonexistent information. If you do not know how to capture a screenshot, ask anyone with a technical bent to show you how.
• We have no greater protection if we pick up a hoax from a newspaper, a broadcaster or any other third party news organisation. The damage to our reputation from running a hoax is the same and in many jurisdictions we are just as liable under the law. Link

Using Online Sources

Here’s what the handbook says about Wikipedia:

Online information sources which rely on collaborative, voluntary and often anonymous contributions need to be handled with care. Wikipedia, the online "people’s encyclopedia", can be a good starting point for research, but it should not be used as an attributable source. Do not quote from it or copy from it. The information it contains has not been validated and can change from second to second as contributors add or remove material. Move on to official websites or other sources that are worthy of attribution. Do not link to Wikipedia or similar collaborative encyclopedia sites as a source of background information on any topic. More suitable sites can almost always be found, and indeed are often flagged at the bottom of Wikipedia entries. It is only acceptable to link to an entry on Wikipedia or similar sites when the entry or website itself is the subject of a news story. Link

All in all, the Handbook contains a wealth of information about errors and corrections. Most useful are the tips for avoiding reporting errors and the guide to not getting fooled by hoaxes. There are also two pieces of timeless advice:

…try to disprove as well as prove your story.

And:

Accuracy always comes first. It’s better to be late than wrong.

When the Sentinel tightened its financial belt back in June, it lost a wealth of seasoned veterans, many of them editors. Those journalists not only wrote headlines and captions. They also scrutinized the work of reporters — correcting spelling, straightening out syntax, double-checking facts — before publication.
With fewer people to do that now, less of that important work gets done, and the result is more published errors.

Yesterday, the ombudsman of the Washington Post wrote basically the same column:

…Growing numbers of readers are contacting the ombudsman to complain about typos and small errors.

"As a virtually lifelong subscriber, I am disheartened by the increasingly poor quality of the editing of The Post," wrote Richard Murphy of Alexandria. If typos can’t be caught by a spell-checker, "then The Post should restore a couple of copy editor positions. You have cut that staff too much."

The Post’s copy editors are among the best I’ve worked with during nearly four decades in the newspaper business. But they’ve been badly depleted by staff cuts as the money-losing paper struggles to control costs. Those who remain are stretched thin while The Post expands to a 24-hour news operation in print and online.

Between early 2005 and mid-2008, the number of full-time copy editors dropped from about 75 to 43 through buyouts or voluntary departures. It has declined further since then, but Post managers won’t provide precise figures beyond saying that six took a recent buyout offer. The need is so critical that most are being hired back on contract through at least the end of the year, and part-timers are taking up some of the slack.

Copy editors are the unsung heroes of newsrooms. Unknown to the public, and often underappreciated by their colleagues, they’re the last line of defense against a correction or, worse, a libel suit…

"By definition, you’ll see more errors when there’s reduced staffing," said Bill Walsh, the A-section copy desk chief. On a typical weeknight a few years ago, Walsh said, the three copy desks handling national, foreign and business news could rely on perhaps 20 editors. Those desks have since been combined into one desk, headed by Walsh. Today, he said, "there are some shifts where I’m looking at seven or eight people total."…

These papers are by no means the only ones experiencing a spike in errors due to the loss of bodies on the copy desk. Adding to the problem is the fact that the move online means papers are churning out more content than ever before. Yet copy editors — and magazine fact checkers — are being shown the door.

Carl Sessions Stepp examined how some newsrooms are coping with this challenge is his recent article, "The Quality-Control Quandary,” It’s a must-read. I fear, though, that few organizations are rethinking their quality control process and means of verification. They’re just trying to do more with less. It’s a recipe for disaster.

I looked at this issue in a recent essay I wrote for Harvard’s Niemen Neiman Reports:

For more than 100 years, one of the most recognizable slogans in journalism has been “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Lately, The New York Times motto is being challenged by the familiar phrase, “do more with less.” This new saying was, in fact, the theme of the World Editors Forum scheduled for March, but the event had to be cancelled “due to the impact of the global financial downturn on newspaper companies.”

News organizations are shedding employees. Those that remain are expected to pick up the slack and also push ahead with digital initiatives. Included in the exodus are valuable copyeditors—the people in whose encyclopedic brains reside a lot of what prevents errors from surfacing in stories. The few, the proud—and disappearing—magazine fact checkers are also being told to grab their World Almanacs and Book of Facts and move along.

Accuracy is a huge journalistic challenge. When reporters are asked to take on more work while the newsroom’s same fallible processes and error-prone technologies remain in place, the result will undoubtedly be a further downward slide in quality. More errors will be followed by more apologies and more corrections. And this is happening at a critical time for journalism—a time when consumers are being asked by journalists using digital media to lend support to their newsgathering mission…

One of the videos features the editor of PolitiFact offering some good, basic advice about fact checking. 

Yes, those are the Obama kids. No, they weren’t involved in the story.

After being spotted by one blog, the image quickly spread. Some people said it was an example of the Times’ right-wing bias. The Times spoke up, publishing a story to explain the error:

…Executive Editor John Solomon said The Times published the story in its print edition without a photo, then editors sent it to the Web platform without an attached photo.
He said The Times’ automated “news themes” engine, constructed to match related content to the Web site, paired the Associated Press photo of the Obama daughters to the bylined story. An online editor later spotted the photo and added a short caption.
“That editor should have removed the photo from the site but did not recognize the inappropriate mismatching,” Mr. Solomon said. “As soon as we learned about the problem, we detached the photo from the story. We regret that this technical glitch led to an inappropriate pairing of the photo with the story and we’ve taken steps technologically and in our editorial process to try to avoid such an episode in the future.”
“We also hope this glitch does not distract from the important and well reported subject of the story: the crisis of school violence in one of the nation’s largest cities.”

The lede of the above story blamed the error on a “technical glitch.” Well, that’s partly true. But this error also occurred because of a lack of editorial oversight. The photo was automatically matched with the story, but someone should have approved it before the article went live. So, yes, a technical glitch. But also a process problem. Solomon seems to acknowledge this when he says that “we’ve taken steps technologically and in our editorial process to try to avoid such an episode in the future.”

Solomon also reacted to the incident by sending a memo to staff. It ostensibly reinforces the importance of accuracy, but I worry that it could result in Times staffers doing more to conceal mistakes. Here’s a relevant passage:

1. Any reporter or editor who makes an error in a story that requires a published correction must submit a letter to the Executive Editor and Managing Editor explaining the mistake and what corrective actions were taken. These letters will be placed in your permanent personnel file.

This sends the message to the newsroom that it’s better to conceal an error than correct it. I know that’s not what Solomon meant to say, but his policy will encourage some staffers to do everything they can to hide a mistake. After all, leaving an error uncorrected means they won’t have to own up to it in an embarrassing letter — a letter that will go in their personnel file.

Solomon is right to want to track errors and understand their cause. But his process is all about punishment and shame; it’s not about learning from mistakes. These letters of confession go into a person’s personnel file. Sure, that provides information for their annual review. But what about the organization as a whole? This information should be collected in a corrections database that helps the newsroom track and understand the most common causes of error. Don’t shame your staff with a high school-esque process that’s all about letters and permanent records. It will only make people want to hide their errors. That’s bad for the newsroom and bad for readers.

The third item in Solomon’s memo addresses the issue of training. I like that the paper is introducing an accuracy training program. But he’s presented it like a remedial class for bad reporters and editors:

All reporters who have had stories with published corrections in the last year and any editors who inserted errors into copy will be required to take a mandatory class on accuracy and precision to be held the first week of June and led by Carleton Bryant.

Clearly, being put in that class is a form of punishment. Ideally, it would be a badge of honor. All staffers should receive accuracy training to help prevent mistakes. They should also be encouraged to own up to their mistakes and share any personal tips for attaining accuracy.

The Times needs to adjust its accuracy plan. Make it about working together to attain a higher standard, rather than singling out staff members for punishment. Make it about learning from mistakes, rather than embarrassing people. Make prevention and correction a part of the paper’s culture.

A culture of shame and blame just makes people scared to get things wrong. It doesn’t help solve the problem.

IT HAPPENED yet again yesterday. This time the victim was John Waters’s column on morality and the National Asset Management Agency.
Which was going along nicely, minding its own business, when suddenly a lower-case “l” – that slenderest and most treacherous of letter types – somehow slipped from the copy, leaving the following sentence: “Certainly since the late 1990s, it has been a matter of pubic faith that the economy should be left to its own devices . . . ”
This is a risk that serious newspapers, in which the word “public” will always feature prominently, run every day. It wouldn’t be as big a problem if, for example, it was the ‘b’ that kept dropping out. But then we or the spellchecker would notice that. Whereas the lower-case “l” has a Judas-like ability to slip away unnoticed, with embarrassing results.
A glance through our archive shows that in the recent past, it has excused itself from stories in such as a way as to suggest (1) that bankers’ confidentiality could be overridden in the “pubic interest”; (2) that Ireland needed more investment in “pubic transport”; (3) that the PSNI was “appealing to the pubic”; and (4) that in Philip Roth’s latest novel, Nathan Zuckerman had been left incontinent by an operation and was reluctant to swim in a “pubic pool”.
Not that long ago, either, a letter writer on this page took Tom Humphries to task for suggesting there had been huge “pubic” interest in Roy Keane’s time at Sunderland.
And our GAA coverage has not escaped either. The “Galway hurling pubic” featured in a recent report; while, after an off-field incident at a Dublin-Monaghan football match a while back, it was suggested that “a county chairman and a microphone combined to allow the business to spill over into the pubic domain”.
I know that county chairman, as it happens, and I can assure The Irish Times it was never his intention to allow the business to spill over in the manner suggested. Against which, I’m reminded of an unfortunate photograph that appeared in the latest Monaghan GAA yearbook. It was of a hurling match against Donegal last year, during which a player suffered a temporary wardrobe malfunction, causing the – yes – pubic domain to spill over into the public one.
Anyway, getting back to the missing “l” phenomenon, the worst thing is when it happens in obituaries. In recent years, we have paid tribute in these pages to at least one citizen whose long and distinguished life had been marked by a commitment to “pubic service”.
Perhaps worse, there was another man who was said to have made an outstanding contribution to “pubic life”: which sounds like something you need to treat with special shampoo.
When these things happen in a newspaper, as they will, the instinct of a chief sub-editor is to seize the offending staff members by the short and curlies and impress upon them the need for greater vigilance.
But I would argue that the recidivism rate suggests the fault lies with the word rather than the wordsmiths. “Pubic” is a clearly a sub-prime – even toxic – adjective; and unlike “public” we could do perfectly well without it. Maybe we should just ban the word, and reprogramme the spellchecker accordingly.
Certainly, if there was a Nama for the English language, it would be buying up such terms as “pubic” and removing them from the system, to help restore confidence…

He goes on from there, and it’s worth a read.

Thanks, Ruth!

*Correction May 1: This post originally and incorrectly said a dropped “i” was the source of the public/pubic typo. The result was that I made a typo while writing about a typo. It’s an occupational hazard. Thanks to everyone who noted it in the comments.

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.

Were the pilots, captain Marvin D. Renslow and first officer Rebecca Lynne Shaw, at fault for leaving the auto-pilot on during icy conditions until the final moments of the deadly crash of Continental Flight 3407, February 12, 2009, in Buffalo, New York?
If you read the media headlines, such as The New York Daily News’ “Auto Doom: Experts say using Autopilot in icy weather sealed the plane’s fate,” Feb 16, or the lede in the Associated Press/MSNBC reports, Feb 15, following the tragedy that killed all 49 on-board and one person on the ground, you would naturally think so.
The AP lede stated, “The commuter plane that crashed near Buffalo was on autopilot until just before it went down in icy weather, indicating that the pilot may have violated federal safety recommendations and the airline’s own policy for flying in such conditions, an investigator said Sunday.”
However, in the Huffington Post version of the AP story, the pilot may have “ignored federal safety recommendations” instead of violating them.
Wow. Either way, it sounds like the pilots are to blame. The AP story continued: “ ’You may be able in a manual mode to sense something sooner than the autopilot can sense it,’ said Steve Chealander of the National Transportation Safety Board [NTSB], which also recommends that pilots disengage the autopilot in icy conditions.”
However, if you managed in all this blame-assigning verbiage, to make it as far as the 18th paragraph, the inconvenient and more complicated truth begins to emerge. It turns out that the issue about the autopilot being on during icy conditions is not, whole cloth, required by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
According to the AP’s own story, “Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency advises pilots to disengage the autopilot when ice is accumulating, but the guidance is not mandatory.”
Not mandatory? Then why does the lede paragraph blare that the pilots “may have violated federal safety recommendations” when paragraph 18 proves the AP reporter certainly knew the pilots could not violate something that isn’t mandatory?
What readers were missing in this and other early reports, slanted as they were by the ham-fisted suggestions of blame heaped upon the pilots, was really a disagreement between two federal agencies, the NTSB and the FAA.
The NTSB wants to have the FAA adopt the policy of always switching off the autopilot in icy conditions, whereas the FAA wants something more measured. So, when the lede paragraph stated that the pilots may have violated “federal safety regulations,” that sounds so ominous; the truth is they may have violated only the NTSB’s recommendation to the FAA—something the FAA themselves do not follow!
Shame on the AP and other media for giving the false impression of pilot error before all the facts are known…

We could do much more with corrections, of course. At a minimum, corrections should be databased. This shouldn’t be any more difficult than adding a correction field to each story in our CMS, instead of just writing our corrections into the body of the story itself. It would allow readers to search for corrections by date, section or author, rather than having to check the corrections page every day to see what’s been corrected recently.

We should also be much more proactive about getting corrections to readers. If you read something on our news site that has changed or been corrected since you last saw it, we should alert you of the change during your next visit to our site.

His second paragraph offers an idea that fits with my corrections and accuracy wishes for 2009. Thompson also had this interesting suggestion:

About four years ago, I daydreamed about an independent, crowd-sourced corrections site that would allow anyone to post a correction or clarification to information contained at any URI. In some ways, with the ubiquity of browser plug-ins and the like, that type of thing would be easier today.

It is easier today, and SpinSpotter is probably the most interesting initiative trying to make this happen.

Today, a Financial Post reporter responded unprofessionally to another Twitter user on his personal Twitter account.
While the remarks were made on the reporter’s personal Twitter account, the conversation first began when the reporter was acting in his capacity as a reporter for the Financial Post.
We hold — and will continue to hold — all our reporters to a higher standard in how they address anyone, in any forum.
We apologize for the reporter’s conduct. Link

The exchange in question is detailed here. It’s rare, but not unprecedented, to see a paper apologize for a reporter’s personal conduct. It’s also rare to see an incident and apology on the same day but, hey, that’s the power of the Internet.

Q. You’ve been the face of The Times through the very roughest times for The Times. Anything you regret?

— C.D. Monroe, Washington

… On Page 4 every day we publish some of our regrets in the form of corrections and editor’s notes. Every misspelled word, every unchecked fact, every time we failed to give someone a fair shake makes me wince. When we blunder in a bigger way — some of the credulous stories The Times published en route to the war in Iraq, for example — I ache for our precious credibility. Even worse is when we get it wrong and then insist on sticking to our guns. (I waited a year after getting this job before I wrote a mea culpa about some of our pre-war W.M.D. coverage.) I take some consolation in the fact that we try, as a rule, to own up to our mistakes and even learn from them. There is no worse feeling in this business, however, than the feeling that you have let readers down.

So, yes, regrets, I’ve had way more than a few. Thankfully they are outweighed by the thrill I get working with some of the most talented, conscientious, honorable people in journalism.

Keller also addressed questions about the paper’s public editor:

A number of news organizations have ombudsmen, independent representatives of the readers, who handle complaints and critique journalistic performance, often in the pages of the paper. The Times had long resisted the idea, largely because we thought it was our job as editors to represent the interests of readers. But after the famous Voldemort scandal of 2003, we realized we could use additional safeguards for our credibility. We created the job of “standards editor,” to make sure our policies on accuracy and fair play were rigorous and to help enforce them, and a “public editor” to serve as a kind of independent auditor, with freedom to air his judgments on the Web site and in the Sunday paper. (We also tightened our policies on corrections, anonymous sources and other issues important to our credibility.) The publisher and I hire the public editor for a fixed term. We recently announced that we were giving the current public editor a one-time-only one-year extension. I have long felt the two-year term was too short for someone who came to this complicated place from outside; it takes a while to learn your way around, and by the time one public editor has figured out the job I’m scouring the landscape for a successor.

Clark Hoyt is the third journalist to hold this largely thankless job — an assignment that makes you few friends in the newsroom, and inevitably leaves some readers dissatisfied. I find him very thorough in his reporting, fair-minded in his analysis, and unafraid of hard subjects. I think he does the job as well as it can be done. Sometimes I agree with his conclusions, even if he is calling us on the carpet. And yes, I sometimes disagree with him. He’s not my commanding officer, or the Supreme Court. He’s an independent critic, an outsider with a hall pass and a platform. He is entitled to respect, but I don’t think he expects conformity.

To answer Mr. Lucey, I hope Mr. Hoyt will stay put until his term expires in June 2010, and I fully support his independence.

Whether we have a fourth and a fifth and a sixth public editor is a question we’ll answer when the time comes. The idea of a public editor has never won universal acclamation in the newsroom. There are still some who believe we have enough independent checks in the legion of self-appointed press critics without paying one of our own. There are still some who think a public editor does more to undermine our credibility, by poking small holes in important stories, than to shore it up.

The other day in a meeting of senior editors I asked for an informal show of hands on the question of continuing the role of public editor. The room was about evenly divided. I’m keeping my own hand down until 2010.

But his most amusing response came after a question about how he spends a typical day:

Really? You’d be interested in that? Well, I think my life is pretty much what you would imagine it to be.

I wake up most mornings to the telephone, invariably some world leader or international celebrity seeking my counsel. Lately it’s been a lot of President Obama — again with the damn puppy? — but sometimes it’s Richard Holbrooke to pick my brain about Afghanistan, or Bruce Springsteen asking if it isn’t time for another Arts and Leisure cover story about Bruce Springsteen. The valet brings breakfast with the handful of newspapers that have not gone out of business. In the limo on the way to the office, I help Warren Buffett sort out his portfolio and give trading advice to George Steinbrenner, not that he ever listens.

At the office, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and I have our morning conference call with Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — plus Fidel Castro when he’s compos mentis. Dictating the world’s agenda entails a lot of conference calls. I’ve been encouraging the cabal to save some money by using iChat, but first we have to persuade Putin to wear a shirt.

Lunch at the Four Seasons is always a high point. Today it’s my weekly tête-à-tête with Bill O’Reilly. He’s really not the Neanderthal blowhard he plays on TV. He’s totally in on the joke. After a couple of cosmopolitans, he does a wicked impression of Ann Coulter. We usually spend the lunch working up outlandish things he can say about The New York Times and making fun of Fox executives. (Once Rupert Murdoch showed up for a lunch date, and O’Reilly had to hide under the table for half an hour.)

I spend most of the afternoon writing all the stories for the front page. (You knew those were all pseudonyms, right?) I write Tom Friedman’s column, too, but, I swear, Bill Kristol wrote all his own stuff.

By then it’s time for drinks and dinner. If you’re reading this, Julian, I think the duck tonight. I had the foie gras for lunch. And no time for dessert. The Secretary of State is coming by to give me a back rub.

Careful, Mr. Keller, I hear Secretary Clinton gives a mean Shiatsu massage.

Dear Colleagues

I have exhorted you all to read carefully what you write. I think some of you are now doing this, but not always thinking about what it is that you read. This can be the only explanation for this week’s worst horror (and, sadly, there is some competition). We ran a story in Tuesday’s paper about a farmer’s wife who died of a heart attack after a thief stole diesel from her farm. This unfortunate lady was called Mrs Dove. Her son is called Michael Dove. In the story he became Michael Gove; who happens to be the Conservative spokesman on schools. You might think this could hardly get worse. I fear it could, and did. Michael Gove not only became the unfortunate woman’s son. He also became a victim in his own right. The thief “admitted to [sic] the theft of diesel, causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Michael Gove and stealing the Mitsubishi pickup‚” Later, this gem of a piece included the phrase “After his was arrest”. I shall not bother to try to compute the number of people who should have read this story before it appeared on the nation’s breakfast tables on Tuesday morning. You get my drift.

There have been so many literals this week that I suspect some of you either never could spell, or have given up trying. Perhaps my favourite was “hocky mom”, followed by “plumb compote” (bring on the lead poisoning). One reader, having spotted the words “Chrsitmas” and “adminsitration” in the same story wondered whether our newsroom was now being run by “mnokeys”. While it is good to provide the customers with amusement, it should be intentional …

If we are setting tests or quizzes for our readers, do try to ensure the right answers really are right. A test for would-be immigrants managed to get the voltage figure for this country wrong. It also said that one had to be 16 to enter the lottery which, as several readers pointed out, appeared to be hard on those aged 17 or more. The answer “16 or over” would have been better. I must stress again that it is of enormous importance to get styles and titles correct, even when they belong to fictional characters. An article on the new film Australia this week referred to the heroine as being first Lady Sarah Ashley and then Lady Ashley. She cannot be both. In the film she is the daughter of an earl, and therefore the first style is correct …

As I’ve written before, it’s The Star’s policy not to restate an error in a correction …
There was an error in yesterday’s paper that’s a little tougher.  A story about the last time gas was this cheap listed other things going on in the coutry at the time.  Among them, “Marines in Iraq committed a variety of abuses against Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.”
Problem is that Abu Ghraid was an Army prison, and those accused were in the Army, not the Marines.  Big, big difference — and I understand any Marines who were offended by the mistake.
Right now, I’m leaning toward wording the correction thusly:
An item in the Nov. 25 FYI section should have said that Army soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Does that work?  How could it be worded better?

The Star isn’t alone in having a policy that proscribes repeating the original error in a correction. Donovan writes that reprinting the mistake is “a bad idea because it puts the mistake in the paper a second time.” True, but repeating the mistake can also help people understand the nature of the original error. Some corrections are borderline incomprehensible due to the “don’t repeat the error” dance. Not repeating the error can raise questions in the reader’s mind. Take Donovan’s proposed correction:

An item in the Nov. 25 FYI section should have said that Army soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

With this wording, the only way to understand the nature of the paper’s error is to go back and read the original article. Maybe the story had said soldiers abused prisoners at a different prison? Maybe it reported the CIA had abused the prisoners? Or that the soldiers had abused Taliban prisoners? As worded, it doesn’t answer a fundamental question: what did the paper get wrong? Here’s a different option:

An item in the Nov. 25 FYI section should have said that Army soldiers, not Marines, abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Or, for the don’t repeat the error fans out there:

An item in the Nov. 25 FYI section incorrectly identified those responsible for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. It should have referred to Army soldiers.

I’m sure an editor could improve my wording, but you get the idea.

As a final note, it’s great that Donovan used his blog to share this process with readers and invite their input.

UPDATE Nov 27: This correction was published today by the paper:

A story in the Nov. 25 FYI misstated which branch of the military was involved in abuses at Abu Ghraib. Army soldiers mistreated Iraqi prisoners there.

A nice comprise compromise, I think.

IN 1864, back when rumor still traveled by foot, a young messenger walked into the newsrooms of New York City’s press row with an Associated Press bulletin that President Lincoln had ordered the conscription of 400,000 additional troops for the Union.
The news arrived at a precarious time for the newspapers — around 2 a.m. Even the night editors had left, forcing a skeleton crew to decide whether to rush something into the paper, or risk being scooped. Two papers took the bait on what soon was exposed as a hoax.
But the news also came at a precarious time for the country: a conscription would have meant the Union army was in trouble, and the price of gold soon shot up. Two journalists from Brooklyn hatched the plan, knowing how best to sneak bogus news into print, and remembering to buy gold beforehand. (They were soon caught.)
Markets exist to convert good information into profitable investments. And, in their deep agnosticism, they also exist to allow false information to create quick profits. During that brief window, false information may in fact be easier to exploit — it shows up just in time, and purports to answer the questions on everyone’s mind.
And while the Civil War-era hoax had to use crude tools (war is going badly, gold rises in the face of bad news), Internet-fueled falsehoods and day-trading sites allow for highly tailored rumors to be quickly amplified and exploited.
In recent days there has been a range of false reports that managed to gain great purchase across the globe while the truth is still logging on.
Early in the month, Apple stock fell as much as 5 percent after a CNN-sponsored citizen-journalism site, ireport.com, published a false item from a user reporting that Steve Jobs, the company’s chief executive whose health has been a public preoccupation, had been rushed to the emergency room. The poster is still a mystery, though the Securities and Exchange Committee is investigating and CNN is cooperating.
In September, United Airlines lost more than $1 billion in market capitalization when traders treated a six-year-old announcement of a bankruptcy as a new development … Link