Last week I wrote about occasional reader questions as to whether The Oregonian has manipulated news photos.
The answer, of course, was that this newspaper does not. Newspapers that have made the mistake of altering a photo have paid a price in loss of reader trust.
This past week, a reader asked whether The Oregonian had altered a news story with an intent to create a bias. He cited an Associated Press wire service story that appeared in Sunday, Nov. 4, editions. It described preparations in Cuba as Hurricane Michelle headed for the island.
The reader compared the AP story in The Oregonian’s morning editions with the story on the wire service’s Web site. He found material in the newspaper that was not in the online version.
He suspected that someone had included “pro-Castro” information that said the government’s “sophisticated civil defense program” typically reduced the number of storm casualties compared with those in other Latin American and Caribbean countries.
No one at The Oregonian inserted that information. Everything in the published version came from the wire service.
Reasons for the difference in the two stories are found in how a news service reports breaking news with its changing developments. Because the AP provides information to news organizations on a continuing basis, stories are revised and sent repeatedly throughout the day.
In this case, AP reporter Anita Snow, writing in Havana, filed a story Saturday afternoon. When she had enough new information to justify resending the story, she filed the story again. In wire service parlance that was the “first writethru.” She continued to update throughout the night.
The Oregonian’s editors selected the sixth writethru for publication in Sunday morning editions. That version included the reference to the civil defense program and the reduced casualties.
The 10th writethru arrived on the wires about 10:30 p.m.
That night and the next morning, The Associated Press posted its latest version on its Web site. Those looking for news on the Internet found a story somewhat different from the one in the morning newspaper.
Wire stories and published stories can differ for other reasons. Editors can select material from several wire stories on the same topic and merge them into one story. In addition, staff writers for the newspaper might insert related local material into a national news story. The reasons for potential changes are many.
More to the point here, they are legitimate.
As people increasingly include Internet news services in their survey of the world’s events, they will encounter honest disparities between what is on the printed page and what is on the monitor even though the source is the same.
Readers of this newspaper have learned a lot about the world since Sept. 11. Background stories, history lessons and maps have tutored us on cultures and countries often not on the surface of our national awareness.
Maps have been an important part of that coverage. Last week a reader looking at a map of Africa said that we had omitted Burundi, Rwanda, Zambia and Malawi. The map, picked up from The New York Times News Service for Tuesday editions, was part of the News Focus page on Islam in Africa.
The reader was right. The nations’ boundaries were included, but the names were not. Every other mainland country, a number of them smaller than Zambia, had been identified.
As with wire service stories, editors at The Oregonian can adapt and improve upon news service maps. In this case, an artist at The Times left out several countries. Editors at this end try to catch such flaws but this time overlooked the lapse.
