Readers may find errors in newspapers, but few of us call them to a paper’s attention.
Why do we suffer inaccuracy?
That’s an old question that arose recently during The New York Times’ scandal when it was discovered that now-former staffer Jayson Blair’s work included repeated instances of plagiarism and fabrication.
Just as troubling was the speculation about the number of people who knew they were reading wrong information but never told the Times.
I’m certain that every newspaper has published errors that readers found but did not report for whatever reason.
Perhaps some readers felt that no one would care. Some probably didn’t want to challenge an institution. Some probably felt they were too busy to mess with an issue that the paper surely knew about already. Others probably wrote off errors to human imperfection.
The problem is that whatever silences readers also numbs the symbiotic newspaper-reader relationship that’s key to producing a news report with tangible value.
When a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll recently found that the public’s trust in the news media has fallen from 54 percent in mid-1989 to 36 percent, I chalked up the erosion to lack of two-way communication as much as anything.
Fortunately, the Star-Telegram-reader relationship carries a high degree of trust, surveys find. That’s related in part to a healthy flow of two-way communication, because we offer an arena in which trust and accuracy have a fighting chance.
Until last year, when the Houston Chronicle appointed a reader advocate, the Star-Telegram was the only newspaper in Texas with such a position. Also, our Customer Service operations in Fort Worth, Arlington and Northeast Tarrant are geared to listen to and help readers.
Writers’ phone numbers and e-mail addresses are published at the end of their articles. Contact information is published daily in every section of the paper.
Still, some readers do not call about questionable content. But plenty of them do.
I’m only one of many staffers who talk with readers, but I’m averaging more than 600 calls and e-mails a month. Roughly 20 percent of those deal with questionable content. Some result in corrections; others don’t because the reader’s information was incorrect.
A random check of readers who contacted me last week yielded some good insights.
In one instance, I’d received a number of calls and e-mails about a three-paragraph article that had run Saturday on Page 5B. Every reader had the same complaint: The headline didn’t agree with the article.
The headline stated incorrectly, “Conscientious folks/more prone to wrecks.” The article began, “People with conscientious natures seem less likely to be involved in wrecks ” We published a correction the following Monday on Page 1B.
The mixup compelled former teacher Betty Moore of Fort Worth to make her first-ever call about an error. She said she had never called about the incorrect spelling and grammar she’d seen in the paper over the years, because she dismissed them as typing mistakes.
But the headline/story disagreement bugged her, she said, and she had the time to call about it.
One reader who e-mailed us was James Morgan of Richland Hills. “What do you editors do?” he typed (in all capital letters).
Of the readers who regularly challenge us, none do so as frequently as Morgan does, and he’s almost always right.
It’s second nature for him, he said. Retired from a career in which he developed and wrote business procedures for Convair, General Dynamics, Lockheed and Bell Helicopter, Morgan notes: “I was not given the privilege of making errors in what I produced.”
He holds the Star-Telegram to the same standard, and he knows that when he speaks, we’ll listen. “I write your writers and get e-mail responses from them, and they’re very good.”
Newspapers’ credibility is not an issue with either Moore or Morgan.
We’re obviously concerned about the matter, Moore said. “You print corrections all the time.”
Morgan believes that newspapers are “pretty accurate.” But when we’re not, he lets us know. “It’s great sport,” he said.
If only more readers felt that way.
