Detroit Free Press: We’ll Check Facts After We Publish
Tuesday, May 17th, 2005Recently Mitch Albom was caught writing about things that never happened in the Detroit Free Press. He also used quotes and other information from newspapers, TV programs, and other sources without crediting the source. The newspaper conducted a lengthy investigation into the entire mess and ended up disciplining Albom and a couple of other writers at the paper. So far, so good. Next, the wheels come off.
After the investigation, the editor of the newspaper, Carole Leigh Hutton, published an article detailing the investigation and its aftereffects. One of the things that she did was institute a tougher ethics policy. This is good. However, here’s where it goes awry:
Begin a program of random post-publication fact-checking to look for inaccuracies that slip through our multilayered editing process.
Obviously, I never went to journalism school, but even I know that you should verify your facts prior to publication. Once something is published, it is widely read and given the credibility earned by its newspaper or magazine. If facts are incorrect, the corrections are always run on page 42 in a small box at the bottom of the page. In other words, almost no one reads the corrections and readers are left with an inaccurate picture of what is happening.
What should the paper be doing? Well, verifying facts prior to publication would be a good start. Of course, everyone makes mistakes, so sooner or later a journalist is going to get something wrong. When this happens, corrections should be run on Page 1 in a prominent place, especially if the story was an important one. At the very least, a correction to a story should get the same prominence that the original story with the errors got.
Newspapers and magazines are already in a difficult position these days, in that they have to compete with the 24-hour cable news networks and internet sites. Truth is, by the time you read a newspaper article the story has already been out on the web for hours. This puts newspapers at a disadvantage. One way they could make up the difference is to strive to be as accurate as possible. If readers know that information in the newspaper is accurate, they’ll still pay attention to the dead-tree media. However, if readers think that journalists at newspapers and magazines aren’t any more accurate than what is available on the web, they won’t bother. Why would they wait twice as long to get something just as inaccurate?
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May 17th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Great post! Don’t you just love idiots?
May 18th, 2005 at 4:04 pm
Well, clearly “a program of random post-publication fact-checking” would be to check a few blogs each morning to see if they got caught. Then go do some fact checking.
Otherwise, if they don’t get caught, why bother?