Why journalists get big things wrong
CORRECTION
It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement.
We regret the omission.
4 July 2004
(The civil rights movement in the United States took place in the 1960s-70s.)
Quoted by Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error in Time magazine on Wednesday
Why Journalists Get the Big Things Wrong
(Condensed from Time magazine)
Most of us assume that serious errors are rare, that truly bad mistakes are committed only by truly bad or inept people, and that most mistakes are the product of individual rather than systemic causes. All three assumptions are wrong. Reporters make serious mistakes routinely, and we do so not because we are immoral, but because of the nature of journalism, and of the human mind.
… we could develop specific tools to prevent [errors]. … arguably the most crucial of all, is simply scepticism. As Bill Kovach and Tim Rosenstiel wrote in The Elements of Journalism, reporting is fundamentally “a discipline of verification.” The one question we are most obliged to ask — of our sources and of ourselves — is: How do you know?
Still, given the inevitability of error, the ability to prevent mistakes must be matched by the ability to acknowledge and correct them rapidly and sincerely. That calls for a new attitude: an understanding that the shame doesn’t lie in the mistakes, but in their silent perpetuation.
Full column at: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2032304,00.html #ixzz16PBoG93G
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