Regret the Error

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.