From my latest column for Columbia Journalism Review, here are my five suggestions for how news ombudsmen can make themselves essential in today’s newsroom: 1. Build Your Blog – Many ombudsmen, especially those at newspapers, write a regular column. This used to be the most visible, tangible benefit of an ombudsman. Going forward, the column [...]
Imagine for a moment that we’re in the middle of a presidential election. Now imagine that late in the campaign Rupert Murdoch publishes an editorial in the New York Post condemning a high level Republican campaign strategist for passing along incorrect information about the Democratic nominee to Fox News. Kind of hard to picture, I [...]
I dedicated my most recent Columbia Journalism Review column to the current debate about whether or not a news organization or journalist should delete an incorrect tweet. I also outlined how a Twitter correction function might work: User Controlled: First things first: It’s neither feasible nor desirable to have Twitter play a role in determining [...]
I forgot to add a link to my Columbia Journalism Review column from last week, which provides journalists with a wealth of advice and resources for online verification. An excerpt: Content Analysis Author – Is someone identified as the author of the site or article? Google them, look for a personal website. If their byline [...]
Mike Wise wasn’t. Earlier this week, the Washington Post sports columnist decided to tweet a fabricated claim that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger would be given a five game suspension by the NFL. Wise later said the erroneous tweet was his way of showing that “anybody will print anything.” Well, he proved that people would [...]
… The challenge is to find a way to quickly and accurately sort and evaluate a mass of incoming reports according to your preferences. This is a core element of distributed verification, which I called “the best way to engineer trust in today’s information environment” in a previous column about WikiLeaks’ Afghanistan documents. This is [...]
Today the Telegraph-Journal in New Brunswick issued a remarkable front page apology for a report that became a national controversy in Canada. In early July, the paper reported that Prime Minister Stephen Harper had pocketed the communion wafer given to him by a Roman Catholic priest at the funeral of former Governor-General Romeo LeBlanc. That [...]
This week’s Regret the Error column on Columbia Journalism Review online looks at two media errors that became fodder for late night comedy. Excerpt below. Click on the headline for the full column. Comedy of Errors Jay Leno has made amusing, mistaken, and otherwise notable newspaper headlines a staple of his show. Recently, his rivals [...]
My CJR online column for this week uses a very delayed correction from the New York Times to examine the paper’s policy for correcting its archives. An excerpt is below. Click the headline for the full text. Everything Old Is New Again During The New York Times’s 4 p.m. news meeting on Tuesday, a gathering [...]
My Columbia Journalism Review online column for this week looks at unreliable sources. An excerpt is below; click on the headline to read the full column. Sources of Error He spoke with a polished English accent, once shared a crème brûlée torte with Hillary Clinton, and spent part of the summer officiating tennis at the [...]
This week’s edition of my Columbia Journalism Review online column looks at the mistakes that media outlets make when they report about themselves. An excerpt is below. Click on the headline to read the full column. Close to Home One strict rule in the medical profession holds that no doctors can treat themselves or any [...]
This week’s edition of my Columbia Journalism Review column takes a historical look at the issue of accuracy. I suggest that today’s changing media landscape is just the latest in a series of major shifts to hit the profession. Excerpt below. Click on the headline to read the full column. The News Business Is Changing. [...]
My weekly Columbia Journalism Review online column takes a look at the pitfalls of reporting about other people’s mistakes. An excerpt is below. The full column archive is here. Glass Houses It’s not recognized as one of the fundamentals of the profession, but journalists spend a lot of time pointing out other people’s mistakes. Major [...]
After releasing my free Regret the Error Accuracy Checklist earlier this week (download your copy here), I devoted my latest CJR online column to the subject of checklists. This column offers background on why checklists have proven useful in so many different industries and professions. I examine why they work for journalists, and why we [...]
I’m a bit behind in posting links to my weekly column for Columbia Journalism Review online. Here are pointers to three recent columns, with excerpts. My full column archive is online here. Today’s column: A Rare Peek at Why Errors Occur Last Sunday’s New York Times was a treasure trove of accuracy-related information, and I [...]
On Friday, Columbia Journalism Review online published my latest weekly column. Read it here. I also wrote a Saturday op-ed for the Toronto Star about the year in errors and corrections. Below are excerpts from both pieces. CJR column: The Year in Errata About a month ago, I began the laborious and depressing task of [...]
My weekly Columbia Journalism Review online column is live on the site. The topic: obiticide. Death by media. An excerpt: Death by Obiticide I have some bad news to pass along this week: two people were killed as a result of sloppy journalism. It happens more often than you might expect. It’s frequent enough, in [...]
This week’s edition of my Columbia Journalism Review Daily column is online here. Inspired by the example of Wales Online (background), I look at the issue of scrubbing. Here’s the opening of the column: Scrubbing Away Their Sins We used to be able to throw out the news; to disappear it. The morning paper would [...]
I’m a bit late announcing this, but I’ve started writing a weekly column for Columbia Journalism Review’s website. It’s called “Regret the Error” and runs every Friday on CJR.org. I’ve written eight columns so far, and you can read them all here. This column is a chance for me to provide some context for notable [...]
