Then there’s Fox News, which has nothing anywhere on its website related to corrections or reporting errors. “I was thinking they should change their slogan to ‘Fair and Balanced and Never Wrong,’” Follman joked.
This latest batch of data send the clear message that news organizations as a whole are not evolving corrections and accuracy practices to meet the new medium(s).
“Online is where everything has been going and will continue to be going,” Follman said. “It should be the leading edge of this, but it’s very much behind print and broadcast.”
Correction of the Week
“IN Court yesterday, we apologised to Stephen Hesford former MP for West Wirral.
“On 17 October 2009, we published an article entitled ‘MP who took moral stance “was a sex pest”’. The article reported on proceedings before the Employment Tribunal in Liverpool the day before brought against Mr Hesford by a former employee for sexual discrimination.
“The article also stated that a claim for sexual harassment had been made but wrongly implied that Mr Hesford was being accused of personally having sexually harassed his former employee and as such was a hypocrite having resigned a month earlier as a matter of principle as a parliamentary aide to the Attorney General.
“We accepted that there has been no suggestion of any sexual misbehaviour by Mr Hesford and that the proceedings against him were in his capacity as employer.
“We apologised to Mr Hesford and have paid him damages and costs.” Daily Express (U.K.)
I agree with most of this, that there is a lack of ease in the way corrections are handled online, but they have always been buried on some obscure page in the hard-copy edition of newspapers.
Also, just because an organization (like Fox) does not have any "send us corrections" explicit text on its site doesn't mean the editors don't want to hear from the public with corrections.
There are comments allowed on most articles, and responsible organizations review them and have staff time enough to respond appropriately.
I would expect any reader to feel free to contact the "contact us" address with any corrections or opinions. It's a two-way street; I know you are writing that in some cases, that street is blockaded, but that's not what I mean. Yes, some are as impenetrable as any of our huge corporations. Perhaps this is another reason why hyperlocal journalism might survive.
#1 Posted by t.abeln, CJR on Tue 11 Jan 2011 at 04:02 PM