At some point, the Newsweek scandal will pass, but many of us hope that journalists never forget what caused the firestorm: preventable bad practice.
Even the best journalists — and Newsweek staff members are among the best — are not above sound policies and ethics that are in place to help correct for lapses in judgment that occur in the intensity of driving competitive news-gathering operations.
As the Newsweek controversy illustrates, journalists can call down terrible consequences on themselves, their companies, their industry and the public when they ignore best practices.
There’s no better example than Newsweek’s May 9 Periscope item, attributed to “sources,” that said a U.S. Southern Command report would divulge an incident of U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay desecrating copies of the Quran to unnerve Muslim terrorist suspects.
There was no immediate reaction to the item when it was first released, but several days later, it burst into prominence after newspapers in Pakistan and Afghanistan ran stories about it. Shortly thereafter, riots broke out in those countries; at least 15 rioters died in Afghanistan. Blame fell on Newsweek.
Suddenly, the White House and administration officials were condemning the item as irresponsible journalism that had damaged U.S. credibility and relations with the Muslim world and had compromised the war on terror. Radio talk shows lit up with freshly invigorated anti-media rhetoric. The mess became a top national news story.
Whether the Periscope item ignited the riots and could be rightly blamed for the other consequences is debatable, but there were two hard-and-fast results.
First, the item became an issue among Muslims, debate notwithstanding.
Second, to its credit, Newsweek issued a correction and then a retraction, explaining that its source — not “sources” — was a U.S. official who “couldn’t be certain about reading of the alleged Quran incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts.”
None of this had to happen.
Newsweek took one person’s word because the source had proved over time to be reliable. Evidently, no documentation was seen.
Adherence to just one policy that’s standard at many news outlets, including the Star-Telegram, would have nipped the situation in the bud: Avoid one-source stories.
Journalism doesn’t get much more basic.
Among other things, one-source stories lack depth, perspective and balance. The lone source has a clear shot at advancing an agenda disguised as fact or informed speculation. Motivation must be a concern. Accuracy is jeopardized.
Newsweek’s fall should not be lost on the news media. We know that but for the grace of following good policies and practices, there go we all.
Star-Telegram staffers operate with such a set of guidelines. We take proactive steps before publication to avoid various pitfalls.
Permission to use an anonymous source is difficult to obtain. Either a managing editor or the executive editor must approve. The source’s identity must be disclosed to the approving editor, along with a persuasive reason to grant anonymity.
Policies on documentation requirements are in place. For example, before we say that a lawsuit has been filed, we must have either seen that lawsuit or obtained official verification of the filing.
Many other policies and tools, such as an accuracy checklist, guide us through a news cycle. After publication, another set of policies comes into play, including a plagiarism detection program that checks randomly selected stories against a vast database of published material.
We solicit feedback from sources via accuracy questionnaires. We publish corrections and clarifications promptly as part of our commitment to contend with inevitable lapses in accuracy, fairness and balance. Corrections and clarifications are published on the cover of the section in which the errors occurred, which means that we publish corrections on Page One when necessary.
Last year, we published 709 corrections. This year, we had published 241 corrections through April.
We’re trying to publish a metropolitan daily that readers can trust. We have measures that indicate we’re succeeding. In Knight Ridder’s 2004 readership survey, the Star-Telegram ranked No. 2 among our parent company’s 30 newspapers as a newspaper that can be trusted. Only The Miami Herald outperformed us.
I mention all that simply to shed a bit of light on some internal matters that won’t make national news like the scandals that have left the public with deep misgivings about the media’s credibility — but with little grasp of the extent to which newspapers are addressing the problem.
Readers need to know that newspapers and newspaper associations nationwide are involved in many types of initiatives to ensure higher-quality news reports and to turn this unprecedented tide of disdain for journalism.
If there’s any benefit to the media-related tragedies, it’s the soul-searching that they’ve caused in newsrooms and the ideas that are coming into play as new policies and practices.
Interestingly, as I talk with colleagues across the country about the situation, I sometimes hear sentiment that’s usually expressed by readers about journalists. Instead, it’s coming from journalists about readers:
“They’re only interested in the bad stuff that’s going on. They ignore the good things we do.”
Is this karma?
Actually, the ideal position for the news media is not to be that noticeable — just needed. When the day comes that we are not the news, we’ll know we’re back on the right track.
