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One
of any editor’s most important jobs
is ensuring the accuracy and integrity of the newspaper’s
content. Trust needs to be an important part of the editor-reporter
relationship, but skepticism is part, too, says Steve
Buttry, API's Director of Tailored Programs.
(The Town
Talk, Alexandria, La., April 12, 2006)
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Accuracy
First
Many editors are
more comfortable upholding a newspaper’s standards
for style and grammar than upholding ethical standards. Trust needs to
be an important part of the editor-reporter relationship, but skepticism
is part, too. As Poynter’s Roy Peter Clark noted last year, the
editor sometimes needs to take the approach that Ronald Reagan took to
arms control treaties: Trust but verify. Keep in mind that one of any
editor’s most important jobs is ensuring the accuracy and integrity
of the newspaper’s content.
Confidential sources
Confidential sources
are a major source of inaccuracy in news stories. At the least, they
deprive stories of one of the essential W’s:
who. Also, sometimes when sources request confidentiality, they do so
for reasons that deal with accuracy: Either they are trying to manipulate
the reporter into publishing inaccurate or misleading information or
they honestly think they are telling the truth but lack confidence in
some details.
Discuss with reporters how they grant confidentiality, both on specific
stories and in discussions about work habits and beat coverage. On some
beats and with some agencies and sources, confidentiality becomes necessary
and routine. Make sure that the routine never comes from the reporter.
Editors and reporters should discuss confidentiality before the reporter
turns in a story using with unnamed sources. Editors should discuss confidential
sources with each of their reporters in at least three ways:
- Discuss in general
how your reporters grant confidentiality. Make sure reporters try
first to get people on the record. Make sure reporters know why a
source wants confidentiality. Make sure reporters know it’s
OK not to grant confidentiality if this source is not reliable or if
this source should be speaking publicly. When a reporter grants confidentiality,
make sure she seeks to get the source on the record later about points
she plans to use in the story. Make sure the reporter asks confidential
sources for documentation or for help in verifying the information
the source is sharing. Your reporters need to know that you expect
them to try to get information that they can attribute to named, knowledgeable
sources or documents. Your reporters should know that they must tell
sources that you will have to know the sources’ names.
- As reporters
work on stories, discuss sources with them. You should know when
a story might involve confidential sources. You should learn the
names of sources to whom reporters have granted confidentiality.
You should learn the reasons for confidentiality and the terms of
your reporter’s agreement. You should discuss with the reporter strategies
for persuading a source to go on the record, for finding other on-the-record
sources for the same information, for finding documentation that will
verify the source’s information. Effective discussions with reporters
as they are working on stories will prevent hasty decisions on sources
made on deadline. Your discussions about confidentiality must be detailed
enough to serve as a deterrent to fabrication of bogus sources by reporters.
Your discussions also must be detailed enough that the honest reporter
doesn’t want to grant confidentiality except in extreme cases.
- Read stories
looking for references to unidentified sources. Some references are
more subtle than the explicit “an informed source
said” or “a transportation department official said” references.
Watch for references such as “neighbors said” and “observers
said.” Ask who the neighbors and observers are and why we aren’t
quoting them by name. Make sure they actually are plural and not just
a neighbor or an observer. Watch for allusions to unnamed sources,
using passive verbs such as “are believed to be” or “are
reported to” or through adverbs such as “reportedly” or “allegedly.” Ask
who believes, who reports, who alleges and why you can’t name
them. Ask whether the reporter can get that information from another
source. Ask why that information has to be in the story. Ask whether
the reporter has tried to get the source on the record about this specific
fact. And don’t fall for that “informed source” reference
above. You shouldn’t be publishing anything from uninformed sources.
Give the reader a hint at how the source knows: a source close to the
investigation, a source in the department, etc.
Talk about ethics
Editors can set
a tone for ethical behavior and set a high standard for accuracy and
credibility by talking about ethical issues with their reporters. When
a case such as Judith Miller or Bob Woodward is in the news, talk with
reporters about how they handle confidential sources. Ask whether they
have any interesting confidential tips that they are pursuing or think
they might pursue someday. When a newspaper fires a reporter for plagiarism
or fabrication, express your outrage to your staff. Ask reporters what
editors can do to catch reporters who are cheating and to protect honest
reporters from the harm by fraudulent reporters. If you have a reporter
on your staff who has gaps in his ethical education, you can fill those
gaps by making your own standards clear. If you have a reporter on
your staff who’s dishonest, you might be able to
deter cheating by expressing your disgust and by discussing accountability
and accuracy. You hope your reporters will remain honest because of their
own sense of ethics. But people without a strong ethical foundation want
to keep their jobs and want to please their bosses. The importance you
place on ethics will help shape the ethical values of young reporters
and give pause to any reporters who don’t personally care much
about ethics.
Demand verification
An editor’s most important question to reporters is “How
do you know that?” Ask that question as reporters tell you about
important facts they are finding in stories. Identify what they know
from first-hand sources and when they are chasing rumors. Don’t
discourage them from chasing rumors that would make good news stories,
but make sure they know that second-hand information isn’t good
enough if they can get first-hand information and/or documentation. Make
sure your reporters ask their sources the same question: How do you know
that? Asking “how do you know that?” will identify instances
when your reporters are passing along common-knowledge information that
they don’t know first-hand. Demanding verification will show that
sometimes the common knowledge is wrong. Newsroom coach Rosalie Stemer
adds a follow-up question editors should ask after the reporter answers “How
do you know that?” Then ask, “How else do you know
that?”
Ask reporters about
the motivations of sources, regardless of whether the source is named
in the story. Be skeptical of the motivations. If the motive is self-interest,
as it often is, beware that the source might twist, select or shade
facts to serve that interest. If the motive appears altruistic, beware
that the reporter might not have uncovered a self-interest that underlies
the sense of altruism, however genuine it may be. If the reporter doesn’t
know how your story is benefiting the source, the reporter may not
know the full story.
Read stories skeptically.
Do the math. Note the odd spellings and ask reporters about them if
they haven’t cq’d them. If they have
cq’d them, ask how they verified and make sure they didn’t
just check their notes. When you read a quote that seems too good to
be true, ask about the context.
Check out your
suspicions
Reporters and editors
should be able to trust one another. But frequently in the investigations
following discoveries of plagiarism or fabrication, we learn about
doubts editors had about the reporter. Editors should act on their
doubts. Ask tough questions of the reporter. If the reporter is worthy
of your trust, this is where you will build trust. In investigative
projects, some newspapers do line-by-line editing, where the reporter
shows the editor notes or documents to back up every fact or quote in
the story. You don’t have to tell a reporter you’re suspicious.
Say this is an important story and we want to be sure we have everything
nailed down. Ask him to bring his notes up to your computer and have
a seat. Then you go through and start asking, “How do you know
this? How do you know that? How else do you know that?” The reporter
will show you notes or documents and your trust will grow. You’ll
probably correct some minor detail in the process (line-by-line editing
is never a bad idea, when you have the time) and the reporter will be
glad you were that thorough. Or the reporter will make excuses about
notes being left at home or lost and you’ll know you need to check
your suspicions deeper. Consider routinely editing stories this way,
asking the reporter to bring the notes and source documents with them
to check facts. If a reporter has to fake several notebooks to get away
with fabricating a story, she may decide it’s easier to actually
do the work.
Some editors and
reporters have complained that editors need to trust their reporters
and the recent scandals have damaged that trust. That is indeed unfortunate,
but lamenting the facts doesn’t change them.
Consider, though, that magazines routinely use fact-checkers to call
sources and verify information in stories. That doesn’t mean they
don’t trust their reporters, just that they have higher standards
of accuracy than newspapers. It also doesn’t make magazines immune
from scandal, though it helps them deter and detect cheating by reporters.
If you have the
slightest doubt about a reporter or a story, trust your instincts.
Check the story out, ask some tough questions. Hold the story if you
must, even if you’re worried about competition or
timeliness. Don’t publish a story you don’t trust. Again
and again as scandals of fabrication or plagiarism unfold, editors confess
that they had doubts about something but didn’t voice them or didn’t
pursue them aggressively enough. Don’t be that editor.
- To check for plagiarism: You can run a first check yourself
quickly using Google. Pick a few passages that ought to be unique and
paste them inside quotation marks in the Google search window. If you
chose a long phrase, you should get few, if any, hits. The more distinct
the phrase, the more you should scrutinize any hits at all. (Be sure
that you put quotation marks around the passage in the search window.
You get one hit (the online version of this handout) on the nine words
in italics above, checking Google or Google News, with quote marks, but
1.2 million hits without quotation marks.) Avoid using clichés
in this check because they will turn up lots of hits. For instance, “sounded
like a freight train” gets nearly 15,000 hits because people always
say that about tornadoes. That doesn’t mean your reporter was unoriginal,
just that her sources were.
- Google is free and
easy to use, but it doesn’t catch many stories
that are no longer posted. You can check a broader news database by checking
unique phrases in Lexis-Nexis or another news database. Commercial services
such as mydropbox.com can check a whole story for you.
- To check for fabrication: If
you wonder whether a reporter’s
source actually exists, run the name through some databases. Phone books
are a place to start, though increasingly less useful as more people
use cell phones as home phones. Learn what databases your newsroom has
readily available, such as driver’s licenses or voter registration.
Learn what public databases are available online in your state. Commercial
databases such as AutoTrack are pretty thorough. A person would need
to live a pretty sheltered life not to show up on AutoTrack. As a deterrent
to fabrication and an aid in checking sources, you could ask reporters
to list sources’ phone numbers, addresses, ages or similar identifying
information in notes at the top of a story. Google can be effective if
a source has a distinct name (if not, perhaps the identification the
reporter uses will give you a way to narrow your search). Not finding
a source in a database or Google doesn’t mean the source doesn’t
exist (I can’t find a couple nephews and nieces on Google, but
everyone in my generation in my extended family is there). But absence
from a database should raise suspicion and prompt further inquiry.
- To deter and detect plagiarism or fabrication: Discuss
with other editors whether your paper should routinely send follow-up
questionnaires to all the sources in randomly selected stories, asking
whether your reporters in fact interviewed them and whether they were
quoted accurately, depicted fairly, etc. You will hear some trivial
complaints and some complaints you will dismiss from sources who were
unable to “spin” scrupulous
reporters. Mostly you will hear that your reporters are accurate and
honest. But if your reporters are fabricating, you will learn that people
in their stories don’t exist or never talked to your reporters.
If your reporters are plagiarizing, you will learn that the source did
say that, but two years ago to another reporter, not last week to your
reporter.
Uphold and teach standards of accuracy with reporters
In pursuit of excellence,
reporters seek to develop lots of sophisticated skills, such as investigative
reporting and narrative writing. Accuracy isn’t as glamorous
as those skills but without accuracy, they become worthless. Accuracy
is the foundation upon which reporters must build all other skills.
Editors supervising inexperienced reporters may need to teach these
skills. Editors supervising experienced reporters may need to remind
them of techniques they may let slide as they fall into routines. Or
the editor may need to teach new techniques of checking accuracy to
experienced reporters. Ensuring accuracy involves several steps:
- Asking effective questions.
- Taking accurate notes.
- Gathering source documents.
- Questioning information.
- Verifying information.
- Fact-checking your story.
Make sure your reporters know these steps and techniques to ensure
the accuracy of your stories.
Get the names right
Screw up a name and readers who know how that person spells the name
will not trust anything else you write. And the source will certainly
question your ability or commitment to getting anything else right.
- Ask every character to spell her name. Any
time a reporter has access to a character whose name you will be using
in the story, the reporter should ask the character to spell his name,
however common the spelling (if it seems like a stupid question, the
reporter can make a self-deprecating joke or a reassuring comment about
her dedication to accuracy). The reporter should print the name clearly
in the notebook as spelled, then read it back to the character as she
has written it. A reporter who assumes she knows how to spell the name
and just reads the presumed spelling back to the character risks error
by at least two means: the character is not fully engaged and isn’t paying attention
when the reporter spells the name wrong or the character does not hear
the reporter well, whether because of an impairment or background noise,
and confirms an incorrect spelling. Asking “usual spelling?” presumes
that the reporter and the character have the same understanding of what’s “usual.” Maybe
the character answers “usual spelling.” Still seek confirmation: “John
with an H?” or “Steven with a V?” Better yet, spell
out the name and use the question: “John with an H, J-o-h-n?” In
addition to ensuring accuracy, this redundant exercise underscores to
the character that he’s talking for the record and that the reporter
who is taking notes of what the source says and planning to print the
name.
- Get it in writing. Reporters can improve accuracy by asking
the character to write her name in the notebook. Then the reporter reads
it back to her to make sure the reporter can read her handwriting. Encourage
reporters to ask for a business card.
- Nail it down. If
a reporter is covering an event rather than an interview, insist that
he gets a program or agenda beforehand. Then the reporter should try
to locate the main people and ask them if their names are spelled correctly
in the program. If someone the reporter doesn’t
know speaks or does something during the event, the reporter should try
to get to him as quickly as possible and get his name. If that is not
possible, the reporter should ask someone who would know. Then the reporter
should try to run the person down by phone to verify. The reporter’s
notebook should have each name spelled right, verified by the character.
If possible the reporter should have at least one printed item with the
name also on it.
- Get contact information. Reporters
also should ask the source for contact information: home, work and
cell phone numbers and e-mail address. Contact information is important
when the reporter needs to check facts with the character later or
when you ask for more details or verification.
- Question numbers. If a reporter cites statistics in a story,
ask whether the numbers came from a source or a document. If they came
from a source, ask whether the reporter asked where the source got the
figures. Make sure the reporter gets the report that is the source of
those statistics. Then the reporter can verify, add context and find
more stats.
- Evaluate the source. Ask the same questions of your reporters
that they must ask of source to determine how knowledgeable and reliable
this person is: Does the source hold a position that would give
him official access to this information? Is the source well enough connected
to learn this information unofficially? Has this person given you reliable
(or unreliable) information before? Has this person given you inaccurate
information before? What is the source’s motivation for talking
to you? Is the source willing to go on the record and stand behind her
story publicly? Who else knows this? Who else knows more about this?
- Evaluate the information. Ask questions of your reporters that
they must ask of their sources to determine how knowledgeable and reliable
this information is: Does your source know whether this is theory,
speculation, rumor or fact? If the information is factual, is it current?
Is it complete? What is the context?
- Challenge the information. Who
might disbelieve this information? Ask whether the reporter has tested
the information by sharing it with someone who might want to refute
it. If this person can’t refute
it, that’s almost a form of confirmation. If you get conflicting
stories, challenge both. Insist that the reporter follows them to their
sources. Seek confirmation for both. Try to find the truth. Or at least
present the conflict rather than buying one story as true.
- Write immediately. Even if a reporter is not ready to write
the full story, encourage them to write a first draft immediately after
important events and interviews. Writing while the notes and memory are
fresh greatly improves accuracy.
Audio recording
Know whether your reporters are using audio recorders and understand
their work habits so you know how they are using recorders.
To record or not to record. Audio recorders can help reporters
quote someone accurately. They also (when using a digital recorder) provide
audio clips for your web site. They do not, however, ensure accuracy.
A reporter who is recording might get lazy or sloppy in taking notes
and might not have accurate notes if mumbling or background noise makes
a recording inaudible or if the recorder malfunctions or runs out of
tape or storage space. Recording is especially helpful in these situations:
- Interviews that the reporter knows could be contentious. Use of
the tape recorder might head off claims that the reporter misquoted
the character.
- Interviews with a character the reporter knows to be a fast talker.
- Interviews involving interpretation from a foreign language.
- Interviews in
the reporter’s
language with someone who has a heavy accent.
- When lengthy
dialogue or a Q & A format will be important. Few
reporters can take accurate verbatim notes that long.
- If a reporter is inexperienced at taking notes and knows his notes
are not very good, a tape recorder can help while gaining experience.
If reporters
use a recorder, be sure that they:
- Take notes as
if they weren’t recording, because sometime
the recorder will fail, and at the worst possible time.
- Make sure they have plenty of memory (or tapes, if using tape) and
fresh batteries.
- Choose a quiet setting. Background noise in a restaurant or at a
ballgame or political rally will drown out the quote the reporter is
looking for on the tape.
- Ask if the character minds the reporter recording. Sometimes a recorder
makes a character uneasy. Suggest that the reporter tells sources that
the recorder helps ensure accuracy.
- Reset the counter to 0 before they start recording. The reporter
should check the counter now and then, writing the count in her notebook.
When the reporter hears a key quote that she might want to use, she
should write down the count next to notes on the quote. That way the
reporter can find quotes quickly.
Don’t let
recording become a time-waster. Too many reporters
transcribe their recorded interviews, ensuring the accuracy of lots of
information they will never publish. Tell reporters to write their stories
from their notes, just using the recording to check the exact quotes
and facts they use in the story. The time they save will help ensure
the accuracy of the information in your paper.
Verify using other sources
Share these tips with reporters, to help in verifying the information
in their stories:
- Who else knows? Seek
other people who are knowledgeable about this situation. They can confirm
or refute what you’ve been told.
They can fill in gaps. Seek to resolve differences. Again, ask them how
they know. Beware the echo chamber: You aren’t receiving confirmation
if your second source only knows the information because the first source
told him.
- Seek documentation. Find
official data, records and reports that can confirm, refute or expand
upon what you have been told. If you are writing about a court hearing
you didn’t attend, get the official
transcript. Photographs might help you verify some details.
- Seek recordings. If video or audio recordings are available
of an event you are writing about, see if you can watch or listen to
them.
- Go online. Seek
verification (or original information) at the official web site of
the organization you’re writing about and
web sites of agencies that regulate the organization and interest groups
that monitor the organization. Be as wary of information you find on
the internet as you would of any other source of information.
- Seek understanding. Make
sure you understand what you’re
writing about. Seek context. Seek explanations for inconsistencies. Seek
another perspective.
Check your facts
Share these tips with reporters to help them fact-check after they
have finished a draft of a story:
- Check every name. When
you’re finished with the story,
check the spelling of every name. Check against your notes, but that’s
not enough. Check against a written source, too: a business card, legal
document, phone book, web site or public record database. If you find
a conflict, check again with the source. Check the title, too.
- Check every number. Double-check each number, too. Again, your
notes are not enough. Check documents, reports, databases, web sites.
- Check the quotes. Double
check the quotes against your notes and/or recordings. Check word for
word. If the quote has a “not” in
it, be sure that it made it into your story.
- Ask, if you’re
not sure. If you can’t make out
something in your notes that you think was important, call the character
back. You can say, “I thought this was what you said, but I just
wanted to be sure.” She may confirm, correct or elaborate. And
she might tell you a couple things she thought of after the interview,
stimulated in thought or memory by your questions.
- Check technical matters. If
you’re writing about technical
matters, such as scientific or legal matters, you probably have simplified
for the reader. Run your description past an expert to make sure you
haven’t misunderstood or confused something important.
Resources to help ensure accuracy
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