From a column by Express-News public editor Bob Richter:
Frustrated by the inability to do anything about the high cost of fuel or groceries and the egg-frying-on-the-sidewalk South Texas heat, let’s turn to something you and I have the ability to change for the better:
Making the San Antonio Express-News the most trusted, respected and accurate source of news and information in this region.
That high-minded language, by the way, is right out of the Preamble to our new Ethics and Practices policy.
One way to gain respect and credibility is to admit it when you’ve done wrong. To that end, the Express-News publishes corrections on Page 2A, under a headline “Setting it straight,” Many of the corrections you see there are reported by readers…
Last year, the newspaper published 494 Setting it Straights, about 41 per month.
This year, through May, corrections are down by an average of 10 per month. In only one month, January, have Setting it Straights even hit the 40 mark. But it’s early. Last Thursday we published eight corrections on 2A, the most in a long spell.
And while we ran nearly 500 Setting it straights in 2007 and are closing in on 200 so far this year, that’s not to say that journalists here – or South Texas readers – catch or admit every error…
The Express-News has long held that corrections shouldn’t repeat the error. For example, don’t say: “The Missions beat Frisco, 3-1, Saturday night, not, 3-2, as was reported on Page 10C of Sports on Sunday.” Instead, say: “The Missions’ score, as reported on Page 10C Sunday, was incorrect. The Missions won, 3-1.
The new ethics code allows for flexibility in writing corrections, designed to clarify mistakes for readers, rather than leave them wondering what was wrong…
December 18, 2007 – 8:00 am
Reader Deborah drew our attention to an unfortunate typo in a Nov. 23 story in the San Antonio Express-News. Headlined, “Art to go,” it was about a program that “sends teaching artists into schools and social-service agencies throughout the community.” And:
The goal is to encourage students to be creative in an era when funding for the arts has been slashed to the bone.
“We’re like a finger in the dyke,” says Paula Owen, president of the Southwest School, about the program.
Oh dear.
(We looked for a link and couldn’t find one, but the text was verified in Nexis.)
January 4, 2007 – 8:00 am
A columnist and the administrative assistant to the editor at the San Antonio Express-News resigned after she was found plagiarizing from Wikipedia and other sources in three columns. From a column by the paper’s public editor:
…The initial investigation found information, taken from Wikipedia, a free Internet encyclopedia, was published in the Watchdog column on Page 2B of the Metro section Dec. 25. The information that was not attributed concerned the origin of Dec. 25 as the birth date of Jesus Christ.
Jacqueline Gonzalez, the Watchdog columnist and administrative assistant to Express-News Editor Robert Rivard, resigned Tuesday after admitting the judgment error Friday.
Gonzalez has been an Express-News employee for three years and became Rivard’s assistant last fall after previously working as a newsroom editorial assistant.
“Nothing is more important to us than the trust of our readers,” Rivard said. “They have to know with some certainty that we act swiftly and unequivocally in the face of such a transgression.”
An Express-News employee discovered the plagiarized information last week after the material hadbeen published. Subsequent to her admission that she lifted information from Wikipedia, the Express-News research department Tuesday scoured 25 columns Gonzalez wrote as the Watchdog. The research discovered two more examples where material was lifted from other sources and used without crediting those sources.
One, a Nov. 20, 2006, Watchdog column about wedding insurance, found Gonzalez plagiarized whole phrases and only slightly rewrote other information from a Web site of the Insurance Information Institute.
The other example was from a Dec. 4, 2006, Watchdog column in which the research staff found Gonzalez had lifted information about identity theft from the AES/PHEAA Investigative Services Web site. AES is an acronym for American Education Services. PHEAA is the acronym for the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency…
