What always surprises me about newspaper errors is how simple they usually are.
Someone’s name is misspelled. Another person’s age is wrong. The address or time for a concert is listed incorrectly. The statistics in a graphic do not match the statistics in an accompanying story.
When errors of this type are pointed out, The Salt Lake Tribune, as do most newspapers, prints corrections or clarifications — usually on the front of the Utah section. In 2002, 2001 and 2002, this newspaper printed about 400 of these errata in each of the years. This number is not particularly high, but the fact that it is consistent is troubling.
If news sources give reporters incorrect information, that is one thing. If reporters, editors and copy editors fail to spot mistakes, that’s another. When officials provide incorrect information, the corrections usually place the blame, but when a staffer is at fault, then the wording of the clarification might be a bit softer, such as: “A story Tuesday indicated otherwise.”
That’s correction-speak for: “We got it wrong.”
Many journalists were trained to be more careful about basic story elements like who, what, where, when, why and how come. Names, for instance, are so important that students at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University get an automatic failing grade on any paper where any name is misspelled.
Most newspapers take this business of mistakes so seriously that they put in place systems to avoid such errors. The Detroit Free Press has an accuracy and credibility committee in its newsroom. This group discussed ways to respond to the American Society of Newspaper Editors “Examining Our Credibility” project that polled readers on what bothered them about newspapers and what made them lose trust in news reports. The committee then developed a system they share with other newspapers and with journalism students.
The survey’s number-one response from readers was that too many mistakes — including factual errors, spelling or grammar mistakes and stories and graphics that do not match — undercut the credibility of the messenger.
No kidding.
I get reader complaints about errors all the time. I pass them along and they get corrected.
But there is no overall plan at The Salt Lake Tribune for stopping the errors at the source.
To illustrate how simple such a plan would be, I will quote from the Free Press Reporter Checklist (this can be found at www.freep.com/ jobspage/academy/accuracy.htm):
“1. Have you double-checked all names, titles and places mentioned in your story? Have you tested from the screen and CQ’d [indicated they are correct in the story] ALL phone numbers or Web addresses [tried to call by phone or tried to reach the Web site]?
“2. Are the quotes accurate and properly attributed? Have you fully captured what each person meant?
“3. Is this story fair? Who or what might be missing from the story? Have they been called and given a chance to talk?
“4. Have you run spell check and checked the math?
“5. Have you fact-checked your information given to graphics or photography? Have you seen the completed graphic or photo?”
Elegantly simple. No brain teasers, no stamp of a think tank, no big words. Easy for everyone to understand.
The Free Press has similar checklists for assigning editors, copy editors, photo editors, photo assignment editors and photographers. They are serious about accuracy.
It is this kind of effort that pulls news organizations out of the error heap.
And, it’s a kind of effort the public should know about.
The Salt Lake Tribune has no such formal process for avoiding errors, but it ought to.
