While the world of journalism was reeling from the news of Jayson Blair’s fakery, Globe readers were busy with other matters on the Monday morning of May 12.Within the first hour or so of business, they reported that:
The phone number published in the previous day’s travel section for tourism information on Prince Edward Island was really a sex hotline ad.
The entire section of Mother’s Day classified notices had mysteriously failed to appear on Sunday, deeply disappointing children who had sent in their dollars to honor Mom.
The Globe Calendar of the previous week had published the wrong dates for the Walk for Hunger and Mayfair in Harvard Square, so when people showed up for those big-draw events Sunday they were told they were a week late.
But here’s the good news: In each case, readers were not afraid to complain. They felt wronged, and they said so.
That’s especially heartening in the wake of the Jayson Blair revelations. The most chilling aspect of the sad saga has been how many people who were misquoted or mischaracterized by Blair failed to speak up. They had, it seemed, come to expect that reporters would get it wrong, or that papers were not concerned with setting the record straight.
The Globe’s review of Blair’s tenure here — summer internships in 1996 and 1997 and freelancing in 1998 and 1999 — has turned up relatively few problems, certainly nothing compared to his error-pocked career at The New York Times.
But I wince at even the small errors that went unchallenged. Vermont author and St. Michael’s College professor Sharon Lamb says she didn’t bother to complain when Blair, in a July 1997 piece, quoted her more-or-less correctly but got her first name wrong. Why not tell the Globe of the error? ”Because reporters always make mistakes,” she said in a telephone interview last week. Besides, she says, it was a minor matter.
She’s right that the error was not of great substance — but I still wish she had spoken up. Publication of a correction is one of the paper’s best tools for tracking sloppiness. Complaining readers can serve as a paper’s First Alert system.
I worry, too, about what Lamb’s view of journalism says about the future of any partnership for accuracy between the paper and its readers. ”Consistently it feels like you give them (journalists) something and they create something else out of it,” says Lamb, who has considerable experience with the press both as an author and as a contributor of opinion pieces.
If that is one’s view, seeking a correction does begin to seem like a fool’s errand.
The problem runs deep. I asked the media-savvy public affairs officer at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., why he didn’t call the Times when he read Blair’s semi-fictionalized account of six servicemen recovering there from Iraq injuries. Lieutenant Commander Jerry Rostad said he quickly realized the story took ”some real liberties” . . . But did I call? No, I didn’t . . . ” he says. ”I didn’t have the time.”
Acceptance of inaccuracy has news managers worried. Last week the Associated Press Managing Editors group released the first findings of a reader e-mail survey that asked: ”Why would readers and sources fail to alert a newspaper to reporting they recognize as clearly inaccurate?” Among the initial 233 responses: ”What’s the point?” and ”Why waste the time?” and ”Somehow they seem to justify the mistake or error to their favor.” Not a good sign.
It’s equally grim that two-thirds of US readers believe news organizations are unwilling to acknowledge errors, according to a 2002 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
What can be done? One thing is to make sure that errors are acknowledged, corrected, and explained. With that in mind, here’s a footnote on the three noted above.
Publication of the sex hotline ad number — which is just ever so slightly different from the Prince Edward Island tourist info number — was the result of a reporter’s transcription error. Corrections ran the following Tuesday and Sunday. (The readers who called about the error seemed more amused than upset.)
The electronic file containing 73 ”Happy Mother’s Day” classified notices went astray because of miscommunication between departments. Disappointed customers got a refund and a call of apology. (Still, they were definitely more upset than amused.)
The Globe Calendar initially ran the correct dates for the Walk for Hunger and the Mayfair, but the next week, after the events were held, it listed the events a second time, saying they would be held on the upcoming Sunday. The error quickly produced a correction, but many people didn’t see it on Page F9, and showed up anyway for the event-that-already-happened.
”I’m so mad,” fumed a woman who had hauled her grandchildren to Harvard Square for the Mayfair. She certainly let me know it, too. But I’m glad she called.
