Tag Archives: error prevention

Speed versus accuracy in journalism: towards a new debate

October 23, 2009 – 3:02 pm

Today’s edition of my weekly column in Columbia Journalism Review looks at the issue of speed versus accuracy in journalism. I hope you’ll take a moment and read it, as it relates to this post. Think of the column and post as branches on the same tree.

My column looks at the issue in terms of the consequences of rushing out stories in today’s media environment, and why scoops aren’t what they used to be. This post examines the value of speed, and how it should be weighed against accuracy.

I confess that I started working on this several months ago, when New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt wrote a column that struck a familiar chord: the rush to publish news had apparently led to some inadequate reporting and sourcing in the paper.

It was a good column, the kind of inside look at how a controversial story unfolded that you’d expect a public editor to provide. I found myself agreeing with many of the points he made. But then Jon Landman, then the deputy managing editor in charge of the Times’ online operations, responded to Hoyt and expressed a different view of how the paper handled the story. Most important, Landman gave one of the best expressions I’ve read of the value of speed in journalism. He didn’t argue against accuracy; he simply said that the two need not always be seen as enemies.

Here’s how Landman began his third paragraph:

Of course working fast increases the chance of error and clearly that is a danger to acknowledge seriously and address carefully. But absence of error isn’t the only value. If it was, we’d long ago have scrapped daily and weekly newspapers and magazines in favor of refereed scholarly journals. Speed is a value too.

It’s rare to see a newspaper editor deal so frankly with the issue of accuracy, to not trot out the old “accuracy is one of our most important values” line. The truth is that, while accuracy is valued in journalism, it’s often subjugated in favor of other values. As Landman writes, speed can trump accuracy in the minds of editors. It happens all the time. We shouldn’t pretend that accuracy is always the most important value when it comes to the actual practices of a newsroom. (We also shouldn’t forget, as I note in my CJR column, that the difference between making an error and getting it right is often a matter of making one or two phone calls. Accuracy is often easier and faster to achieve than we think.)

Let me be clear that I’m not suggesting Landman doesn’t care about accuracy, or that he’s advocating ignoring it as a standard operating procedure. He’s simply stating the reality of how journalism works: accuracy isn’t always the number one concern. There is ample evidence to back this up.

Landman isn’t alone in pointing this out. Philip Meyer, one of the most important journalism thinkers/academics of the last couple of decades, made a similar case in his book, The Vanishing Newspaper. He wrote:

A newspaper with a zero level of factual errors is a newspaper that is missing deadlines, taking too few risks, or both. The public, despite the alarms raised in [American Society of Newspaper Editors] studies, does not expect newspapers to be perfect. Neither do most of the sources quoted in the paper. The problem is finding the right balance between speed and accuracy, between being comprehensive and being merely interesting.

There is a balancing act when it comes to certain elements of accuracy. It’s never okay to get someone’s name wrong, or to make a mistake about an easily verifiable factual error. I’m sure both Hoyt and Landman would agree with that. But, in some cases, editors have to make a call about whether they have all the facts, not just the right ones. That’s the kind of thing Meyer is referring to, and, I suspect, so was Landman. These calls have been made for decades, if not centuries, so they aren’t new to the online world. (What is new are the consequences of an incorrect report.)

When it comes to the online environment, Landman argues that it enables a media organization to improve the accuracy process, rather than degrade it:

When the reporting process plays out in public, that’s a good thing. Readers can and do participate. Their participation has a salutary effect on quality — millions of amateur editors catch a lot that a few professional ones miss. And the process of constant checks on the unfolding story produce incentives to keep pushing. In the Kennedy-Paterson story, the never-ending news cycle ultimately contributed to a good result — a story that got to the bottom of the strange back-and-forth between the Paterson and Kennedy camps, sorting facts from rumor and accusation.

This is akin to Jeff Jarvis’ mantra of “publish and correct.” Here’s what Jarvis wrote in a 2006 Guardian column:

We need to recognise that the internet alters how media operate. Blogs – whether written by professionals or amateurs – tend to publish first and edit later, which can work because the audience will edit you. In this medium, stories are never done; rather than turning into fish-wrap, they can grow and become more factual and gather new perspectives, thanks to the power of the link and, yes, the correction.

We all make mistakes. We’re human. And the internet makes our humanity more apparent than polished print and broadcast do.

I have to admit that even though he wrote the (excellent) foreword to the Regret the Error book, this philosophy always made me a bit uncomfortable. I suspect Hoyt may feel the same way. Why not wait 15 minutes or even an hour if it means getting the entire story right, rather than just most of it? When I have this internal argument with myself, I reply to that question by noting that readers can — and often do — spot things that journalists wouldn’t realize even if they waited all day before publishing. So there’s value in getting it out there. Accuracy is not always an absolute. I hate having to write that, but it’s true. Some things are non-negotiable, but others have shades of grey.

This is why journalists need to at least take a few moments and think about why they’re publishing something, and if their news values – speed, accuracy, and otherwise — are in proper alignment.

That’s one process we should never sacrifice for the sake of speed.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Regret Articles | Also tagged , | Comments

NYT public editor addresses errors made in Cronkite article; some basic advice for preventing errors

August 2, 2009 – 12:35 pm

nytbanner1New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt has weighed in on the paper’s recent, error-riddled story about Walter Cronkite. The story, written by television critic Alessandra Stanley, resulted in two corrections, one of which was for seven mistakes. I wrote about the mistakes, and Stanley’s history of error, in a recent column for Columbia Journalism Review.

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?

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Newspapers, Regret Articles | Also tagged , , | Comments

What IT security can teach us about accuracy

November 15, 2007 – 8:00 am

Bruce Schneier, one of the leading thinkers in IT security, recently wrote a column for Wired.com in which he uses the example of corrupt NBA referee Tim Donaghy to examine systems that suffer from single points of failure. The same concept directly relates to journalism and accuracy.

What sorts of systems — IT, financial, NBA games or whatever — are most at risk of being manipulated? The ones where the smallest change can have the greatest impact, and the ones where trusted insiders can make that change.

Donaghy used his position to try and influence the outcome of games, and he was able to because of the way the NBA games operate:

Because individual players matter so much, a single referee can affect a basketball game more than he can in any other sport. Referees call fouls. Contact occurs on nearly every play, any of which could be called as a foul. They’re called “touch fouls,” and they are mostly, but not always, ignored. The refs get to decide which ones to call.

Schneier lists other examples of jobs where people are “both trusted insiders and single points of catastrophic failure.” It could be a “dishonest computer-repair technician…a corrupt judge, police officer, customs inspector, border-control officer, food-safety inspector…”

Or a journalist. Newsrooms build in layers of auditing in an attempt to mitigate the ability of a trusted insider to subvert the system: copy editors, assignment editors etc. But each person in the chain of audit (editing process) is both a point of quality control and a potential point of failure. We then attempt to mitigate that reality by requiring reporters to take notes or record interviews, cite sources, and talk to experts.

Yet we still see people like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, trusted insiders who become single points of catastrophic failure. Incidents of plagiarism, fabrication, and extreme error abound. Clearly, we need to evolve our audit systems. The current reality of shrunken newsrooms — and therefore reduced audit controls — makes it even more imperative that we innovate new ways of ensuring quality. The speed of online news also requires us to find ways to do it at a faster pace.

Yes, a tough challenge. But an exciting one, too.

“All systems have trusted insiders,” according to Schneier. “All systems have catastrophic points of failure. The key is recognizing them, and building monitoring and audit systems to secure them.”

So what does the ideal newsroom monitoring and auditing system look like? Likely a combination of prevention — fact checking, plagiarism detection, training, editing etc. — mixed with post-publication/post-broadcast error tracking and analysis. These elements demand a mix of people, processes and technology. The challenge is creating the right mix and then constantly managing, evolving and improving the system.

It’s a difficult task, but the status quo is a recipe for repeated “catastrophic failures.”

Would you keep following the NBA if you knew another Tim Donaghy was inevitable?

Have an idea for newsroom auditing? Share it in the comments.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Regret Articles | Also tagged , , , | Comments