Nobody is perfect. Anytime journalists commit words to paper, there is the chance for numbers to be transposed in an address, sentences to be garbled and any number of other type gremlins or human goofs to twist the news.
Kurt Godel, one of those persons whose intellect reached beyond normal human restraints and played in the Universe like Einstein’s, laid down some logical and mathematical groundwork in the 1930s when he proved theorems saying, basically, that any rigidly logical mathematical system contains questions that cannot be proved or disproved using the axioms within the system.
An implication of Godel’s work is that simply writing down mathematical problems creates the real possibility of error — and, that brings us back to this error stuff: Simply writing down reports of the news creates the possibility of error.
Why? Because fingers sometimes hit the “3″ key instead of the “5″ key on the computer keyboard. Because much of what appears in news reports is observation by reporters or reports of the observations of others.
It’s easy to understand how this could backfire occasionally.
And, for a news organization to have credibility, it must have a system for dealing with this possibility of error. Part of the system at The Salt Lake Tribune is the copy desk, where editors read the stories and craft the photo captions and headlines that appear in every day’s paper.
If copy editors understand one fact of their daily lives, it is this: Every time reporters and editors commit words to paper, there is the possibility of error; no matter how careful newspaper people are, some of these errors get through.
The policy at The Salt Lake Tribune is to correct any errors that are discovered by staff or pointed out by the public.
Now, correcting errors does not mean that a report that makes your favorite politician look like an idiot is going to be transformed through corrections into a glowing report of public service. But it does mean that the staff of The Tribune is dedicated to “getting it right.”
Accuracy is the name of this game. Sometimes a series of accurate reports pile up to give a glimpse of truth, but truth is a mighty elusive muse.
If you see something in The Trib that is inaccurate or just plain wrong, you may call or e-mail me your complaints. (The phone number and e-mail address are at the bottom of this column.) I will get your information to the proper editor. And, the process of keeping factual an ongoing report of history as it passes day by day will go on.
A quandary? At first, I thought it was a ransom note and wondered if I would be moved to bail out whoever was being held captive.
Formed from letters cut out of The Tribune, the note, slightly smaller than a newspaper page, read:
“Dear Salt Lake Tribune
“Thank you for the newspapers. We have greatly appreciated them every Thursday. We learned a ton about newspapers and current events. We have also used it for other subjects. We are going to make our own newspaper.
You are the best and awesome.
“Sincerely,
“Mrs. Keith’s 4th Grade Class
“Christian Heritage School”
It was a thank-you note for copies of The Trib provided to this group of 9- and 10-year-olds through the Newspaper in Education program. We deliver thousands of such newspapers every year all around Utah.
The newspapers are free to schools through the generous contributions of corporate sponsors and individual subscribers who assign their vacation copies of The Tribune to schoolchildren.
Over the last few months, The Tribune has put most of its NIE activities on the Internet, including a place where
Utah teachers can sign up for classroom delivery of the paper and find lesson plans and activities for young people from first grade through high school graduation.
If you are a teacher, you may go to http://www.sltrib.com/nie and sign up for newspapers for school during the summer — or get a head start on fall duties by ordering your back-to-school copies now. If you know a teacher, give him or her the address and spread the opportunity for young people to get that first draft of history.
Scoreboard:
Number of readers who complained about the Sunday bridge column grid being wrongly numbered: 19
Number of readers who want to know why the Tribune puts stories about religion/the religious anyplace but the Body & Soul section: 9
Number of readers who want to know why some Tribune comics are missing from the Sunday comics pages : 15
Number of people who threatened to cancel their Tribune subscriptions for various reasons: 17
