The recent massacre in Arizona played out on our television sets yesterday. News clips were played and replayed, with agencies scrambling to find the most recent information as soon as it was released.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, check out the coverage from CNN.
I’m not going to rehash all the details, as I’m fairly confident news agencies are on top of it. *See above for the most up-to-date or basically check any organization out there.
The point of this blog isn’t to speak about the tragedy of the shooting, but rather to speak about the tragedy that lies in the hands of news agencies.
As a journalist, reporter or news agency, it is your responsibility to provide facts to your listeners, viewers and readers. Before you put information out into the world, verify it. Make sure it has truth to it. Without truth, you have nothing.
This is journalism 101 right here. It should be second-nature to all people involved in the media. In j-school, we were always taught to fact-check and verify. If you didn’t, you failed.
And failure is exactly what some agencies accomplished in recent days.
I understand the desire to get the word out as soon as possible — and to get it before your competitors. But with this comes the risk that you present false information to your audience.
Accuracy should always trump immediacy.
With social media tools like Twitter and Facebook, it takes literally seconds to get your message out to the masses. I think organizations (and people, for that matter), need to think about this before putting false information out into the world.
For Fox News, who advertises on their Twitter that they are “The most trusted name in news,” they let their readers down. I’m going to admit right now that I am not a huge fan of Fox News. I think it is overly biased and scandalous. With that said, it wasn’t only Fox who published false information in the name of immediacy.
Several agencies reported that Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had died as a result of her injuries. To me, this wasn’t necessary (especially because it wasn’t confirmed — at current time, she is still alive in hospital fighting).
If I remember correctly, CNN and Fox News both reported her death, while Reuters and NPR didn’t confirm. If you don’t know the facts, just ere on the side of caution.
To say someone is dead when they are in fact still alive is a big no-no. Think of the trauma that creates within families and social circles. And in the case of a politician, think of the recoil it causes throughout the entire country.
To me, it would have been sufficient to simply get the word out about the event — say that there was a gunman in Tuscon, AZ and that Giffords was potentially involved. Say that shots were fired and the state of the victims, as well as the volume of victims, is not currently known. Say that the story is still unfolding and you will keep on it.
Obviously these agencies have the means to update their newscast as well as websites when more information is released. The sad part is that these agencies are built for this — they are built for breaking news.
I am thankful that they were able to update their story rather quickly when fact was known that Giffords was being transported to hospital for emergency surgery. But it shouldn’t have come to that in the first place.
I truly understand the need to get news out in a timely manner. But I truly regard the correctness of my story more than the timeliness.
I’m interested to hear a counter argument on this one, so if anyone has any comments, I’d love to hear them.
Is there ever a time when immediacy trumps accuracy? If so, how do you decide?
I don’t have a counter-argument per se, but I do have a couple of points to note:
NPR, one of the first to write that Giffords had died, got conformation from TWO government sources. Editor Dick Meyer wrote a post about it this morning, which you can read here .
Accuracy always trumps immediacy. But at what point do you determine your fact-checking is done and that it’s time to get a story online? If I received conformation from two credible sources, I would proceed with posting my story, then continue updating it as more information comes about.
There’s a great post from LostRemote.com that explains how the news of her death spread on Twitter (They report that it seems like Rueters, NPR and CNN who first broke that she died. Since breaking news happens so fast, of course, it’s difficult to determine exactly who it was first).
I won’t re-hash the post, as it’s best read in entirety. It also brings up an excellent journalist ethics debate on whether or not news orgs should delete incorrect tweets.
In this post, Andy Carvin, who runs the NPR Twitter feed, gives his explanation on why he posted the message. You can read it here, but in essence he gives a strong rational: NPR received reports from the sheriff’s office and the congressional office, saying that Giffords dies. NPR aired these reports on the radio and on the website, plus Carvin also received an email. He updated the Twitter page to reflect this change. No, Carvin didn’t phone the sheriff’s office, or the congressional office, or stake out the hospital. He merely updated Twitter to reflect the information that NPR was reporting. Again, I highly recommend you read the whole LostRemote post, plus Carvin’s remarks.
On a side note: do you really think it’s wise to use the phrase “If I remember correctly” when commenting on a fact-checking situation? Yes, fact checking takes time but, as you stressed, it’s important. Memories are fallible; Fact-checking can be quick. Simply searching “Giffords mistakenly reported dead” will turn up 750,000 hits on Google. You can read a collection of the mistaken reports on RegretTheError.com.
Laurie,
Thank you for your post.
My apologies for missing NPR’s report. I didn’t realize (despite my research) that they had reported Giffords’ death.
I agree that receiving confirmation from two credible sources would typically give one the go-ahead with reporting, although, as Meyer said in the article you linked, “The information we reported came from two different governmental sources, including a source in the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Nonetheless, in a situation so chaotic and changing so swiftly, we should have been more cautious. There were, obviously, conflicting reports from authorities and other sources. The error we made was unintentional, an error of judgment in a fast-breaking situation. It was corrected immediately. But we deeply regret the error.”
With such obvious conflicts in terms of facts, I still stand by erring on the side of caution. If there are major disputes, perhaps one should hold off from reporting the story until they are able to confirm with certainty. If it were me, I probably would have held off on reporting death and instead would have just reported the basic facts — ones that weren’t up-for-debate, as I said in my original post.
However, obviously hindsight is 20-20 and one never knows how they would truly act in such a heated situation.
In response to me using the phrase “If I remember correctly …”, this goes with me doing research. I did fact-check what I was saying, but as some Twitter posts have been removed and many stories updated (with older versions deleted — many of which I read yesterday as the news was breaking), it was difficult for me to say for certain. My memory is fairly clear, so I felt comfortable using that phrase, although I see how you would find issue with it. My apologies, perhaps I should have rephrased it.
This post was not so much about fact-checking as it was the debate about accuracy over immediacy. I understand the two go hand-in-hand (you can’t be accurate without fact-checking, naturally) and that more and more fact-checking can be done as time goes on. In the single moment you have to decide whether your information is valid to break, that is the real debate. If there are “conflicting reports from authorities and other sources,” perhaps a little more digging needs to be done before you break it.
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“If I remember correctly”… this blog isn’t the Globe and Mail, and picking apart posts to examine the accuracy of what is clearly an opinion and point out “journalistic” discrepancies (which is entirely a matter of opinion) is a huge waste of time. Get a different hobby. Or a life.
Whoa Laurie you looked waaaaay too far into that. Glad you don’t read my blog. Hah!
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