As The Courant’s online audience grows, it’s time to grapple with the idea that errors in stories on courant.com just fade away. They don’t.
In cyberspace, Mary Roche is still president of the Manchester Historical Society, despite the fact that a correction published Jan. 12 reported that Mary’s last name is really Dunne and that she is the executive director of the society.
A Google search of Jordan Tyler will find that he is still listed as the captain of RHAM baseball team, even though an item published April 5 noted the designation was incorrect in the April 4 high school baseball preview.
Anyone looking for it will find a recipe for Monte Crisco A La Foreman, although the recipe published April 5 was really for a Monte Cristo sandwich.
These errors may be harmless, but they highlight a problem that must be addressed as courant.com and the paper edition evolve into a seamless operation.
Before the news industry began fretting over stock prices, news staffs worried that readers questioned their credibility. Across the country, committees and focus groups looked into the reasons readers did not trust the accuracy of news organizations. Seven years ago, when a committee at The Courant came up with recommendations to address the accuracy perception, The Courant’s websites averaged 4.6 million page views a month. Last year, the websites averaged 17.6 million page views a month, according to Chris Morrill, vice president for interactive.
It’s not that efforts aren’t made to ensure the accuracy of stories online. When a serious error is identified and the Web staff is made aware of it, the story is corrected. The story then appears as if it were never in error. Watchers call this “scrubbing.” The practice is much too casual. The whole truth of the story’s process is masked, and more mundane corrections can be missed. Unless readers make courant.com’s corrections page part of their reading habits, the correct information can fall through the cracks.
There is the argument that the situation is similar to old newspapers hanging around with erroneous information. But the staff in The Courant’s Center for News Research and Archives makes sure every published correction is linked to the problem story in the newspaper’s archives so as not to perpetuate errors. Anyone relying on The Courant for research would be wise to use The Courant’s archives. Relying on stories found through general search engines could lead to misinformation.
On the website www.regrettheerror.com, Craig Silverman reports on “corrections, retractions, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the media.” He believes “there is some work to be done as far as standardizing online corrections. … One of my criticisms of corrections in general – in the newspaper and online – is that they often lack context. They are so vague that they aren’t very useful.”
He isn’t an advocate of “scrubbing.”
“There’s a sense of honesty that is being communicated when you acknowledge and correct an error,” he said. “The contract with readers is that we will do everything possible to give them the most accurate information. But mistakes happen and when they do, we will make every reasonable effort to present the correct information. … Readers who care – and there are many who do – value that honesty.”
That honesty should extend to The Courant’s online news.
Silverman points to ESPN’s corrections policy as a standout. “There is an operation with online presence, a television presence, radio and a magazine. It has a cross-platform corrections policy. This is a sports channel and they are ahead of every major broadcast network.”
Silverman also notes The New York Times, The Washington Post and the online magazine Slate as examples of organizations with thoughtful and thorough online corrections policies. The Times and Washington Post have a static corrections page linked from their home page. The corrected story is linked from this page and the correction is placed with the text of the article.
Of course, those organizations have large online staffs; The Courant’s is just over a half-dozen. Regardless, it’s time for The Courant to consider establishing standards and clear procedures for online corrections if it intends to continue to be a credible source of information.
