July 29, 2010
Scott Rosenberg: Why are news corrections so hard?
From Andrew Breitbart to the New York Post and the Pew Project on Excellence in Journalism, it’s clear that many news professionals and organizations have some issues with making corrections. I recently spoke to Scott Rosenberg of Mediabugs about the thorny nature of corrections in the media, and how that resistance could change…
By Amy Gahran
On July 19, video excerpts from a speech by USDA official Shirley Sherrod were posted to the web site of popular conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart. He claimed they demonstrated blatant racism, and a media firestorm ensued. But the next day, when the NAACP posted the unedited video online, it quickly became clear that Sherrod’s remarks had been grossly skewed in the editing process.
In the face of mounting criticism, Breitbart later begrudgingly backpedaled on his story by adding the following statement—which entirely sidesteps the core of complaints about the story—as a preface to his post: “Correction: While Ms. Sherrod made the remarks captured in the first video featured in this post while she held a federally appointed position, the story she tells refers to actions she took before she held that federal position.”
Regarding the controversial editing of the Sherrod video, New York Times media columnist David Carr quoted Breitbart as saying: “Everyone wants to make this about me, but I didn’t edit the Sherrod video”—again sidestepping responsibility for the discredited story.
Carr’s column caught the attention of Scott Rosenberg, founder of Mediabugs (a Knight News Challenge-funded service to correct errors in the news media), as well as the founding editor of Salon.com and author of Say Everything (a recent book about the history of blogging).
Rosenberg caught my attention when he tweeted some critiques about Carr’s recent NY Times column that used Breitbart as an example of the problems of partisan media. He expanded on these thoughts in his own Wordyard blog post, and in our interview.
“I respect Carr. His column was a good, solid piece,” said Rosenberg. “My complaint was that Carr has such a prominent platform at the Times, and it’s unfortunate that he missed a perfect opportunity to dig deeper.”
According to Rosenberg, the facile consensus of media commentators around the Breitbart/Sherrod incident can be summarized as: Here is the problem with partisan news, this is what happens when partisans take the helm of news. But Rosenberg points out, “There are partisans everywhere, from avowed to clandestine.” He contends that trying to exclude partisans from the news ecosystem does not help.
“The real problem is that Breitbart did not withdraw his story when it was discredited,” said Rosenberg. “Breitbart found a tiny fact to correct, yet he did not correct the substance of his story. I would argue that such conduct is beyond weasely. In media, it’s like a capital offense—you should never be trusted ever again as a reliable source of information. Every journalist I know and respect—if they found themselves in that position, they would first be mortified, and then immediately withdraw the story. It’s just what you do when you discover your story is built around discredited evidence.”
Rosenberg contends that in general, blogs seem more willing and able than most news organizations to make appropriate, timely, and prominent corrections to stories.
Part of this problem is the nature of media tools: It’s free and very easy to simply add some strikethrough formatting or clarifying/corrective text to a story when you publish using blogging software like Wordpress. But at many mainstream news organizations, their web sites continue to be supported by outdated print- or broadcast-focused content management systems which just don’t handle corrections easily or flexibly. Furthermore it’s vastly more complex and costly, and arguably less effective, to convey corrections via print or broadcast.
But the deeper “tool” issue lurking here may be related to “wetware.” According to Rosenberg, an attitude persists in the culture of professional journalism that corrections are black marks of shame to be avoided as much as possible. “There’s this grudging reluctance to make corrections or retract stories. Most editors and journalists would rather just say ‘we stand by our story.’”
He also noted, “There’s an old saying in news circles that when everyone is telling you you did something wrong, you did something right. That kind of thinking can lead you to disregard error reports.”
News outlets’ difficulties with corrections are highlighted in a new Mediabugs report, Hard to Get a Fix: The State of Corrections in Bay Area News Media. Mediabugs found that “21 of 28 news sites examined—including many of the region’s leading daily newspapers and broadcast news outlets—provide no corrections link on their home pages and article pages. Also, the websites for 17 of the 28 news organizations examined have no corrections policy or substantive corrections content at all.”
And: “Sites that do offer corrections-related content frequently make it relatively difficult to find: It is located two or three obscure clicks into the site, or requires visitors to use the site’s search function. Once located, the corrections content is, in most cases, poorly organized and not easily navigated.”
Rosenberg offers this advice to journalists, editors, and news orgs on about handling error reports transparently and constructively:
“If somebody has reported a problem or error with your coverage that they want corrected, and if you decide not to correct it, be transparent about that decision. You probably had a discussion about it within your newsroom and reached a conclusion. You should present that. If you don’t, you will find people’s trust in you gradually eroding forever.”
He also notes that clear corrections—and transparent, frank discussions about them—are far from a black mark on your journalistic record. Rather, they can be a rich source of compelling content for your site that can help build trust and goodwill with your community. They also are a good way to educate your community about the process of journalism.
Rosenberg notes that one easy approach to transparent online corrections, which most news orgs could employ for free right now, is using strikethrough text. “Bloggers already do this, and it’s an elegant way to be transparent about changes. I’ve spoken to many, many people in the news business about this, and they’re resistant. They don’t like the way strikethrough looks. They often say it’s ugly, or that it creates a mess on the web page. Some believe it looks unprofessional.”
News organizations could go further by adopting an approach to transparent corrections widely employed by software developers and sites like Wikipedia: versioning. That’s when visitors to your site have easy access to earlier versions of the story, as well as notes about what what changed, when, and why.
“The concept of story versioning is similar to strikethrough text, but’s a little nicer to look at,” says Rosenberg. “In software development, versioning is most useful as a practical tool for rolling back to an earlier version of code after some new addition has gone awry,” Rosenberg wrote recently. “In journalism, versioning can be valuable as a foundation for trust. It’s a smart way to solve the dilemma that [every news organization] faces in trying to keep information up to date and correct small errors without seeming to be playing fast and loose with the public record. ...Toss no text down the memory hole, and trigger no Orwell alarms.”
Said Rosenberg, “For journalists, this means that instead of feeling like your hands are tied after publication, and that every change you make must be somehow annotated on the page, you can use digital media at its best—providing the opportunity to keep improving your story without creating an air of suspicion.”
The catch with adopting versioning for news is that many news organizations tend to procrastinate with updating their content management systems. “There’s a feeling of, ‘oh, we can add that feature later.’ Well, maybe it’s time to start, before you lose too much credibility,” said Rosenberg.
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Comments
Excellent points, Amy and Scott. I wish you had cited more news organizations as examples, because many of Scott’s points apply strongly to organizations that are scornful (with good cause) of Breitbart (and probably also of the NY Post). But the attitudes you address are widely held. Here’s how we’ll approach corrections and verification at TBD: http://bit.ly/bKLfTQ
By Steve Buttry, 07/29/10 at 2:10 pm
You misstated Breitbart’s reason for posting the video—he wanted to show NAACP members cheering when a black official said she was planning to discriminate against a white person. He did this in response to comments by some NAACP officials that many tea party activists were racists. And the attendees did, in fact, cheer at Sherrod’s story about wanting to discriminate against the white farmer. That’s where he stopped the tape.
In hindsight, Breitbart should have kept the tape rolling so people could hear about Sherrod’s change of heart, but it was obvious that Breitbart wasn’t trying to get Sherrod fired. His intent was to show that NAACP members were racists.
Now that you’ve been informed of that, Mr. Rosenberg, what needs to be done to get you to correct your article? How hard is it to get a correction out of the Knight Digital Media Center? Or are you so stuck to the narrative that the left-wing media outlets have reported on the Sherrod controversy that you won’t allow the facts to get in the way?
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By wolanlw, 11/02/10 at 10:56 pm
are you so stuck to the narrative that the left-wing media outlets have reported on the Sherrod controversy that you won’t allow the facts to get in the way?
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