On November 8, I received a call in my office from a frustrated online editor at The Bangor Daily News, my local paper. He was upset that I was “flaming the paper on Twitter” by questioning its accuracy, something he found “very unprofessional.”
The editor was upset that I called out his paper on Twitter for not correcting a number of simple errors I brought to their attention. It’s a struggle to get them to correct the record. These were the unaddressed errors: 1) Incorrectly reporting, via a McClatchy-Tribune story, that Saudi Arabia prohibits women from leaving their homes without their faces covered; 2) Misspelling the name of the Maine city of Biddeford; 3) Reporting a wrong start time for a University of Maine football game; and 4) Reporting the wrong conference win/loss record of the University of Maine football team (this mistake was corrected online, but readers weren’t initially notified of the correction).
The editor called me to argue that these mistakes didn’t need to be corrected. The Saudi Arabia error, I was told, had been checked out with the reporter who wrote the story, who said it was fine. “Alright,” I said, “but it’s still factually inaccurate.” As for the misspelling of the town of Biddeford, that was a typo, the editor said, so a correction wasn’t necessary. (The editor-in-chief of the Bangor paper contacted me later and told me that, in fact, a correction should have been run.) The kickoff time of the Maine football game wasn’t worthy of a correction, I was told, because the information came from a TV station, and also, by the time I reported the error, the football game was over, so the mistake was “moot.” The last transgression, the fact that an error was corrected online and readers weren’t notified, was legitimate, he said, and would be addressed.
What is remarkable about this conversation is not only that an editor contacted a reader (and writer for the Columbia Journalism Review) to argue against correcting the record, but that the overworked professional had time to do so. Locking horns with me on Twitter, via e-mail, and on the telephone surely took more time than simply fixing the mistakes and moving on. The paper had to partially do this anyway; someone recognized that the incorrect start time of the Maine football contest deserved a correction, which they eventually published.
The Bangor Daily News is not the only news organization, certainly, that resists proper corrections. The Los Angeles Times, GlobalPost, and the Raleigh News & Observer have all either ignored or denied factual mistakes I raised, and ultimately created more work for themselves. GlobalPost ignored my repeated requests for nearly a month to correct a simple factual error about Serbia, and didn’t respond until I told them I was writing about their recalcitrance in CJR. I then received an e-mail from GlobalPost’s executive editor, who was traveling in Europe with his family, defending the organization’s corrections policy. All because they referred to 1960s Yugoslavia as Serbia, and wouldn’t respond to my request to correct it.
There are plenty of publications that race to get things right. When I’ve contacted The New York Times regarding corrections, they’ve been fixed and listed online within hours. One tweak I suggested to the Times related to style, not necessarily factual error, as a Times reporter used the word “anachronism” when I believed she meant “anomaly.” Nonetheless, the malapropism was fixed online a few minutes after I e-mailed the author. Earlier this year, The St. Petersburg Times op-ed page misquoted Marlon Brando’s character in The Godfather, a small mistake they promptly fixed. One of the swiftest and most rigorous newspapers I’ve come across in terms of corrections and accuracy is—this’ll be humbling—The Daily Tar Heel, the student-run paper of The University of North Carolina, a daily with the policy that a page-one error gets a page-one correction.
I'm tempted to ask whether the Report An Error Alliance (reportanerror.org) should put up a web form we could use to send invitations (to join the Alliance) to media outlets, and keep a (visible) list of how many invitations have been sent, to those orgs that haven't joined.
#1 Posted by Anna Haynes, CJR on Wed 16 Nov 2011 at 05:29 PM
I'm glad Justin Martin has had a good experience in getting the NY Times to correct errors, but I haven't. Back in the mid-2000s the Times did a piece about the reaction in my then-hometown Hollywood, Florida to President Bush's proposal to privatize Social Security, with an approving quote from Republican Congressman Clay Shaw, who the article said was the local congressman. When I contacted the corrections editor and pointed out that our local Hollywood congressman was a Democrat who strongly opposed Bush's privatization and noted that even Shaw's office said Shaw did not represent Hollywood, the editor insisted that the article was accurate because Shaw's district included a tiny uninhabited strip just south of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport. I was thinking, why not just run the damn correction rather than splitting hairs with me in a totally bogus way. Pshew!
#2 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Wed 16 Nov 2011 at 06:52 PM
Admit an error? What better way to demonstrate to readers that you care about the integrity of your product and actually listen and react when valid complaints are made. I once worked for a newspaper that went so far as to identify the culprit - "Due to an editing error..." or "Due to a reporting error..." - when appropriate. The purpose wasn't hang to hang someone out to dry, rather to be fully open. We all make occasional errors, often in haste, but product integrity should always come before ego.
#3 Posted by Bud Wilkinson, CJR on Thu 17 Nov 2011 at 11:12 AM
Why DO so many journalists (especially older ones) resist running corrections? I've been puzzling over that question for 15 years as a media critic and news-council director. My conclusion: Geneva Overholser was right when she said it's not that journalists are thin-skinned...they have no skin! Journalists love to point out others' errors, foibles, follies, inadequacies and shortcomings, but they hate to admit their own. I've seen case after case of this when people came to the Washington News Council (http://wanewscouncil.org) after they couldn't get media organizations to run needed corrections, clarifications or follow-up stories. When we took their formal written complaints to the editors or producers, the defensive walls went up and the wagons circled. Why? Is it arrogance that they are omnipotent and shouldn't have to admit they have feet of clay? Do they think their motives are so noble and their hearts so pure that they can be forgiven a few minor mistakes (even though some are pretty major)? Or is it a basic, fundamental insecurity among many journalists who actually know deep down inside that they aren't that good or that smart, but if they concede that in public their fragile self-images as the heroic defenders of the public's right to know, already frayed, will start to permanently unravel? Sadly, I've come to conclude that the last explanation may be closest to the truth. But Bud Wilkinson is absolutely right when he says that admitting error is actually the BEST way to show that you care about integrity, accuracy and ethics. The more journalists do that, the more they will be liked and trusted. What is so hard to understand about that? The more journalists of all kinds, shapes, sizes, stripes and colors begin to recognize and practice the same Transparency, Accountability and Openness that they demand of those they cover, the more credible and trusted they will be. We call it the "TAO of Journalism." See http://taoofjournalism.org for details. It's real simple and is growing steadily worldwide -- especially among younger generation of journalists. They get it, even if their greying elders don't.
#4 Posted by John Hamer, CJR on Thu 17 Nov 2011 at 01:52 PM
I see errors and misstatements about the accounting industry and the largest global accounting firms all the time. Even major media and famous columnists make mistakes based, I believe, on their lack of familiarity with how the industry really works and the fact they write about it in depth so inconsistently and infrequently.
I could spend all day every day sending emails or correcting them publicly on Twitter or on my blog. When I've tried in the past to help privately, some bold faced names didn't even acknowledge my email. Nor do they make the correction.
I suspect they think that if they don't know the difference, no one else will.
I've settled on publicly calling out only the most egregious errors and writing about the industry accurately on my site, Forbes, American Banker, and anywhere else I can get published. I also quietly help those who have been receptive in the past.
#5 Posted by Francine McKenna, CJR on Sun 27 Nov 2011 at 12:28 PM