Background here and here.
TVNewser acquired the memo that ABC News head David Westin sent to staff about the findings of the internal investigation into the work of Alexis Debat, a former consultant with the network. Some relevant excerpts:
...This review was extremely sensitive, as it required going back to confidential sources in this country and abroad. It also involved traveling to Pakistan to confirm first-hand the circumstances of Mr. Debat's work there.
Early in our review, we learned that there were other interviews Mr. Debat had published in France that the subjects denied had been conducted. We reported this story immediately on ABC News.com.
We have now completed our review. After going through all of the stories Mr. Debat worked on for ABC News, we found no instances of false reporting. Mr. Debat was not the sole source for anything ABC News reported. Moreover, we confirmed with Mr. Debat's confidential sources that they had given him the information as he'd claimed in contributing to our reports. We also confirmed that Mr. Debat traveled to the locations in Pakistan as he had claimed and talked with the sources he had identified.
Our review did uncover four details of Mr. Debat's reporting that we couldn't confirm. In one case, he mis-identified which branch of U.S. Special forces had engaged in a particular operation, although we did confirm the other facts surrounding the operation. We also found disagreements over the location for two meetings reported on by Mr. Debat, although, again, we could confirm the other facts surrounding the meetings. And, one of the people whom Mr. Debat identified as attending a meeting would neither confirm nor deny that he/she was a direct participant. None of these discrepancies would rise to the level of a formal, on-air retraction because none of them was material to the substance of our report.
So none of the stories he worked on need to be retracted, but does this mean ABC News won't inform viewers of its findings? Why not explain the detailed investigation that took place?
Also, an AP story about the memo that ABC has on its website seems to have a misleading headline. (This appears to be AP's doing, not ABC's; see here.) It reads, "ABC: No Errors Tied to 'Fake' Consultant." But Westin's memo clearly states that there are details and facts that can't be confirmed. Is that really the same as "no errors"? Also, the AP story does not detail the discrepancies outlined in the memo. Why not?
ABC News is also instituting changes to its practices:
There are three changes we are making in our internal practices based on what we've learned from this case.
Starting immediately, we will include both our News Practices team and the corporate Human Resources Department in the hiring of all consultants, reviewing in particular claims of prior employment and educational history. We will also undertake a review of current consultants where appropriate.
When we hire a consultant, we will make a determination of exactly how that person will be identified on all programs and platforms.
News Practices will be alerted each time that we include a consultant in our reporting to ensure that the consultant is being used and identified properly.
We undertake extensive efforts in all of our reporting — and particularly in our investigative reporting — to check and double-check information we are given so that no one source can compromise the truth of what we present to our audiences. Based on our review, our overall systems and procedures worked in the case of Mr. Debat. Nothing in our review, of course, condones the instances of resume enhancement or fake interviews that Mr. Debat published elsewhere.
Equals a marriage made in heaven as far as we're concerned.
On Sunday's edition of Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me!, the wonderful news quiz show that airs on NPR, Stephen Colbert was brought on to do the Not My Job segment. To our joy, the program decided to quiz him about media errors, and it used the oh-so-soon-to-be-released Regret the Error book as its source. Colbert managed to get two out of three questions correct, while also providing some of his usual brand of entertainment in the interview prior to the quiz. To listen, go here and then click on the "Not My Job: Stephen Colbert" link on the page.
Trust us , you'll enjoy it. Perhaps it will even inspire you to purchase the book. We're just sayin'...
The good folks at Check Your Facts recently published an item stating that the roll out of the New York Times internal corrections database is complete. The paper is now entering all of its corrections into a central database, much like how the Boston Globe, Rocky Mountain News and a few other US papers have been doing. Reports CYF:
Check Your Facts has learned that the New York Times may finally be making good on one of the recommendations laid out in a 2005 report titled “Preserving Our Readers’ Trust.”
Fresh from a "training class," a well-placed source at the Times says a computerized tracking system for corrections is being implemented.
Correspondent Adam Klasfeld learned of the new system through correspondence with a New York Times editor (Check Your Facts is withholding the editor's name in order to maintain open communications on the matter). The NYT editor said that no tracking system as described in the report currently exists but that a “training class” was held for a new system. “We are just implementing it,” wrote the editor. “We are beginning with corrections on October 1.”
We reported on the roll out of the system in December of last year after speaking with Greg Brock, the paper's corrections editor:
A final note from the Times: Brock says the paper does have a corrections database that is being used by some departments. Each department can see its own corrections tally, and Brock has access to the total data. He says they are working to roll it out within all departments. This database was one of the recommendations of the Siegal Committee. It's good to see the paper following up on this project. We hope it's fully operational ASAP.
In an email response this week, Brock said the system was fully operational as of September 17. "So it is in place, though we are continuing to train editors who will use it only occasionally because they work on sections or special issues of magazines that publish just a few times a year," he wrote. "The main news desks are already using it."
We asked if the paper plans to release its tallies the way some other paper do (see these links: 1, 2, 3, 4), and Brock said the issue hadn't yet been raised, but that he would look into it. As of now, he is distributing reports to the relevant editors on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis in order to show them the most common types of errors in their sections. It's good to hear the data is being put to use to help fuel preventative initiatives.
Last week was a strange one for media accuracy.
First, Us Weekly published a feature, noticed by Jossip, that poked fun at the inaccuracies of its competitors. Yes, a celebrity weekly used accuracy as a competitive differentiator. This is not all that new; even media outlets that traffic in gossip or are known for getting things wrong need to maintain a semblance of accuracy.
The early English newspapers of the 17th century made a habit of printing fantastic tales about massive serpents or gigantic births, and they also spent time boasting about their commitment to truth and accuracy. Just like Us, they needed readers to buy their next issue and so credibility mattered. The Accuracy Boast -- a strident, usually empty claim of credulity meant to reassure readers -- is meant to vouch for the tales that lay within; it's supposed to make readers feel better. Mostly, though, it comes off more as an exercise in self aggrandizement by the publication.
And so one wonders why Us would paint a bullseye on itself by bragging about its accuracy, especially in a media environment where one can summon up their mistakes at a moments notice. Like, oh, this:
Or maybe this (from Jossip):
Or this from The New York Post's Page Six:
ON Dec. 28, we reported that Steve Bing went on a "dinner date from hell" with Pamela Anderson. The item, based on a report by Us Weekly, was wrong. The date did not occur. We regret the error.
And why not one more:
In some early editions of the July 18 issue, Us Weekly inaccurately reported that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were adopting a baby boy together. Her new daughter is, in fact, a girl, and while Pitt was present when Jolie signed the adoption papers, he himself was not a party to the adoption. As the magazine went to press on the night of July 4th our reporters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia were continuing to report out the story. By the following morning we learned that we had made these errors and stopped the print run in order to correct the story. However not all issues were corrected in time.
As one can read from the above correction, Us' claim is that it makes more of an effort than other tabloids to confirm information. It's saying that, in the world of gossip weeklies, Us Weekly is the least inaccurate. (For any grammar hounds out there, we chose that poor phrasing on purpose.) The best of the worst.
(At this point it's necessary to note that Craig Silverman, the editor of this site, once spent a day and-a -half as a stringer on assignment for In Touch. That was roughly four years ago, and it was a one-time assignment. He also once bought a subscription to Us Weekly for his girlfriend. Maybe that evens things out.)
Says Us: "We don't say that we don't make mistakes; that is the nature of any news gathering operation. What we don't do is wholesale fabricate stories to sell magazines." Ah, so their failures are just the result of poor reporting, not malicious intent. The difference does matter in the grand scheme of things, but in the world of celebrity gossip weeklies, it almost seems an insult to readers to try the Accuracy Boast as a selling point. People know what they're buying.
...Speaking of Accuracy Boasts. Lou Dobbs was profiled on 60 Minutes on Sunday, and he uttered one of most ridiculous lines regarding accuracy we've ever heard. One of the biggest Boasts of recent memory. After being confronted with an inaccurate statistic used on his show (something CNN defends as being accurate), Dobbs told Leslie Stahl, "Well, I can tell you this. If we reported it, it's a fact."
"You can't tell me that. You did report it," Stahl replied.
"I just did," Dobbs said.
"How can you guarantee that to me?" Stahl asked
"Because I'm the managing editor. And that's the way we do business. We don't make up numbers, Lesley."
Dobbs was likely trying to make a statement about the standards he upholds on his his show. But the assurance that, "If we reported it, it's a fact" is one of the most hubristic, laugh-out-loud statements we've heard in a long time. It's the quintessential Accuracy Boast: in defending the accuracy of his work he makes a statement that's wholly incorrect. No publication, news show or type of journalism is 100 percent accurate 100 percent* of the time. Claiming total accuracy is an error in itself.
Both Us Weekly and Dobbs seem to greatly underestimate their audiences. Us thinks its readers view the magazine as a serious journalistic enterprise that makes different kinds of mistakes than its competitors; Dobbs thinks people will believe he's infallible. Both should have shown a bit of humility and honesty and ditched the Accuracy Boast.
*Correction May 8: This number was originally written as "1100 percent." While this serves to prove the point of the sentence, it is ultimately a sad mistake born of sloppiness We regret the error.
Alessandra Stanley wrote a TV column for Wednesday's NY Times about Brian Williams and the major network anchors that made ABC News hot under the collar. A senior exec at the network fired off a letter to Romenesko that was widely blogged about yesterday. The Times today ran a correction (now included in the online column) to address ABC's concerns. Let's compare.
ABC letter:
There are glaring errors in Alessandra Stanley's column today. For the record, Charlie Gibson was in Washington, DC for the State of the Union (not at his desk in New York as Stanley wrote). He anchored both "World News" and ABC's primetime coverage of the President's speech from Capitol Hill. Following the speech, he interviewed Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain...
NY Times correction:
The TV Watch column yesterday about reports from Iraq by the NBC anchor Brian Williams, and the competition among NBC, ABC and CBS to draw viewers to their evening news programs, referred incorrectly to coverage of President Bush’s State of the Union address in January by Charles Gibson, the ABC anchor. He covered it from Washington, not “from his desk in New York.”
Okay, so we're one for one as of now. Except the ABC letter continued on:
Stanley also falsely asserts that since Gibson took over as anchor in late May, he anchors solely from New York City. That is demonstrably untrue. Gibson has reported from: The Middle East to cover the escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah, including from Jerusalem, the Israeli-Lebanese border and Larnaca, Cyprus (July 16-19); from New Orleans for the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (August 28 &29); from Nickel Mines, PA to cover the Amish school shooting (October 3); from Amman, Jordan for Bush-Maliki summit (November 29 & 30); from Washington, DC, when the 110th Congress convened (January 4); and from Philadelphia (October 5), Boston (October 24), Dallas (November 13), Houston (November 14), Atlanta (November 15&16), Detroit (January 29 & 30), and Chicago (February 12 & 13).
How did Stanley assert that Gibson "anchors solely from New York City"? Here's the relevant text from her column:
Mr. Gibson hasn’t exactly overexerted himself in his new job. He was the only anchor who didn't go to Washington to interview Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House. (He entrusted Terry Moran with the task.) He also stayed put for the tornadoes that devastated Florida in early February...
This is where we begin to deal with a more subjective view of error. Anyone reading the above sentences, especially when coupled with the erroneous statement that Gibson was in New York for the State of the Union address, would clearly understand Stanley is suggesting Gibson is a bit of a homebody who doesn't leave the anchor desk to cover stories. But does she specifically say that he only anchors from New York? No, although it's also clear that's what she's saying.
These hair-splitting distinctions can be very important, but they can also be very frustrating for sources and those being written about. ABC is not going to be 100 percent happy with the correction offered because (and we're guessing here) it will feel that the article made unfair assertions about Gibson based on inaccurate information. The Times is being strict in only correcting the one clearly stated factual error. The issue of fairness goes uncorrected. This is common; fairness is a difficult, subjective thing to assess and correct.
In this case, we have a media-on-media error and that's one of the reasons why there has been so much blog chatter. The other reason for the extra attention is that the author is Alessandra Stanley.
In the end, this is a very telling example of why corrections are and aren't given for certain requests. Was it unfair and incorrect to suggest that Gibson is largely tethered to his NY desk? Based on the evidence supplied by ABC, it appears so. But the fact that the article only suggested this, albeit very clearly, turned ABC's complaint into one that could be classified as subjective, even if it appears valid. This example shows the balancing act that corrections/section editors walk every day, and it also shows why sources who request corrections are not always pleased with what they receive.
ABC had one final complaint:
Finally, Stanley take a gratuitous and unfounded swipe at Gibson stating that he is on vacation while Williams reports from the Iraq. For the record, this is Gibson's first vacation in ten months.
This is an issue of fairness and context, not fact. Stanley wrote, "This week, while Mr. Williams is in Iraq, Mr.Gibson is on vacation." That sentence is totally accurate. Yet it exists to drive home her questionable point about the supposedly lackadaisical Gibson. But she hasn't made a factual error, and so no correction.
One of the most enjoyable correction-related experiences comes at the end of every episode of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption, a sports talk and interview show featuring Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser.
As ESPN explains, at the end of every show, “researcher Tony Reali corrects any statistical fouls Kornheiser and Wilbon made in the heat of battle.” It’s a fun feature that’s often fodder for a little competition between Kornheiser and Wilbon, and it also serves the purpose extremely well: viewers get the right information and no errors go uncorrected. It’s arguably the best example of a regular TV correction anywhere in North America. (Do it better? Let us know.)
Now ESPN has taken its commitment to corrections further. After collaboration between John Walsh, ESPN’s executive vice president and executive editor, and senior staffers in the television, radio, print and online operations, along with consultation with experts at the Poynter Institute, ESPN now has a cross-platform corrections policy and related procedures.
From now on, corrections for any mistaken reporting by ESPN can be found here. A link to the corrections page appears prominently on the drop-down “ESPN” tab on the site, and readers can easily submit a correction using a form on the page. Once submitted, it goes to a senior editorial staffer who forwards it to the appropriate person for evaluation. ESPN is also entering every request for correction into a database, and logging every correction in another. This will enable them to evaluate progress and identify trouble spots. And to help with error prevention, its online operation recently added more copy editors. The end result appears to be a clear policy with appropriate procedures and tracking capabilities.
“It’s the right thing for our fans and users, and the right thing for our journalism,” Patrick Stiegman, the vice president and executive editor of ESPN.com, told us last week in an interview. “Given the fact that our news organization has really matured and we have so many moving parts across different platforms, the time was right to formalize the [corrections] policy and procedures with the idea that espn.com would be the hub for corrections across the company.”
Stiegman says corrections will still continue to* be issued in the originating medium, emphasizing that, “we have always corrected our errors.”
According to the new policy, ESPN will issue online corrections for errors that “involve a significant factual mistake, or materially change the implication or connotation of the reporting.” Stiegman says that, for example, an error in someone’s batting average in an online article would be corrected within the story but not noted on the corrections page. This is what’s called a “scrub” and it’s important that ESPN not get carried away with its scrubbing, lest it become a way to avoid running corrections.
As the policy states, “This policy is not intended to cover inconsequential factual errors, such as minor statistical mistakes, inadvertent and immaterial misidentifications, minor inaccuracies in a developing story or font errors that don't impair the viewers' understanding of a story.”
Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for journalism values and a senior faculty member for ethics at the Poynter Institute, reviewed the policy with three Poynter staff members. “All of us felt the new policy was substantial and meaningful,” he said. “We described it as: ‘well-thought out, thorough, professional, responsible, comprehensive...’ We suggested the ESPN guidelines on corrections ‘will set a new standard for broadcast and online transparency’ and the guidelines could be a ‘model’ for other news organizations.”
As for the increased copy editing resources in the online operation, Stiegman says, “the amount of content being produced was out pacing the copy editing resources behind it.” ESPN also hired an ombudsman 20 months ago.
Overall, it looks like ESPN has taken the issue of corrections seriously and applied the necessary effort and resources to come up with its cross-platform policy and procedures. While the issue of scrubbing is not ideal, it could be acceptable if only applied to the smallest of typos.
ESPN’s work should also serve as notice to all the “hard news” organizations out there who haven’t deemed it necessary to create an online corrections page. That means broadcasters like CNN, CBS, ABC, Fox etc., as well as newspapers like USA Today, which recently totally redesigned its website and neglected to add a corrections page. Perhaps this will spur them into action.
Good night, Canada!
*Correction March 5: The word "to" was originally missing from this sentence. The word "procedure" in the headline also contained an extra "e" in the middle.
