The "Correction"

Why are most news outlets so willing to correct errors of fact but so unwilling to acknowledge that some stories, purporting to be assemblages of facts, amount to serious distortions of truth? It is precisely these kinds of distortions that so concern the public. The standard practice of correcting an identification from a caption in yesterday's paper hardly reassures a person whose character and livelihood may have been destroyed in a story that missed the mark.

To their credit, most newspapers run corrections daily. But when was the last time you heard a correction on a TV newscast? Many broadcast news managers say they don't have time in a newscast to do it. One has time to do what one is committed to doing. If you are committed to getting a story right in the first place, but fail, don't we have the right to assume you are committed to getting it right in the second place?

And, people wonder, when you make corrections, why don't you give them the same prominence your errors had?

The Times Editors' Note

The New York Times has an unusual commitment to righting wrongs in print. A dozen or so times a year you'll find, with the standard corrections, something called an Editor's Note, addressing Times distortions or lapses. An Editor's Note on the obituary of the governor of South Dakota, George Mickelson, who was killed in a plane crash this spring, offers a clear example:

"The obituary included an account of a 1989 arrest of the Mickelsons' teen-age son after an incident during a party at the Governor's mansion while the elder Mickelsons were out of town. While the incident was newsworthy at the time, there was no indication of any lasting relevance to the Governor's career. It should not have been reiterated in his obituary."

There you have an example of a news organization - an especially powerful one - volunteering to be held accountable for its shortcomings. At what cost? Loss of power? Of pride? Of public respect? Obviously, Times managers have decided that the potential gains of such vulnerability outrun any losses. In fact, readers might see the paper as more powerful for its forthrightness, justifiably more proud and deserving of greater respect. When was the last time you read that sort of editor's note in another newspaper?

Resistance

The Times editor responsible for those notes - Allan M. Siegal - says there's a resistance to the notes at the paper: "One of the hardest things, but sometimes necessary, is to bruise the feelings of a colleague by saying that what that person wrote is wrong. Every time we run an Editor's Note we tell the public and the world something we don't normally let people in on - what standard we want to be held to in the future. That's why we have a resistance to ethical codes and news councils."

Alternatives

Some papers treat such matters in columns by ombudsmen or reader representatives, but those do not convey the authority or the responsibility of the editor, the way a correction or clarification does. Local TV news departments generally run about a half-dozen corrections a year and even fewer clarifications of stories that may have misled viewers.

Most people who call the News Council are very upset about something they've read or heard about themselves in the news. They want vindication, not dollars, and almost all are willing to waive their legal right to sue for libel in return for the opportunity, through the Council's process, to hear the news outlet justify its behavior or acknowledge its shortcomings.

Undeniable Benefits

David Cox, CEO of Cowles Media, says any news outlet that makes itself vulnerable to complaint and criticism establishes a competitive advantage. That's because the outlet's public stance makes it human, not distant; open, not arrogant. People prize humanness and openness in a society whose institutions, including the news media, have bred so much skepticism, cynicism and hostility in the past 20 years.

Chris Argyris, an organizational development specialist at Harvard who has worked with news outlets, says that they all insist that the institutions they cover learn from their mistakes and change their behavior, but that news outlets themselves have built-in defenses that keep them from doing the same thing.

An extreme view, but it compels attention.

Newsworthy asked readers' representatives and ombudsmen around the U.S. and Canada about their papers' corrections policies:

Correction Policies

Boston Globe

Gordon McKibben - A reporter or editor makes a careless mistake; as a result a reader misses a concert, or includes a whole cup of cocoa powder instead of a quarter cup in a recipe, or sees a loved one identified as someone else, or puts out his rubbish on a holiday and nobody picks it up, or reads that seventh-graders (instead of 12th graders) are getting instructions on how to use condoms, or is told that (the late) Charles Addams will attend an event next week - all mistakes the Globe had to correct. But none of this deals with the most frequent reader complaints - about real or perceived errors of judgment, taste, bias, sensitivity and other journalistic sins.

Hartford Courant

Henry McNulty - Shouldn't newspapers correct their errors of judgment and, just as important, label them "Correction"? The New York Times comes close, sometimes printing an "Editor's Note" that corrects a misinterpretation, fills in missing facts or provides balance. The goal is to set the record straight, not to affix blame, although when we can pin the error on someone else (the state police, for example) we're usually quick to do so. The state police didn't write the story, The Courant did. It's our job to catch inaccuracies, contradictions, and other lapses in what sources tell us. When we don't do that, who's to blame? If The Courant is determined to let readers know where mistakes came from, I wouldn't object. But let's point the finger all the time, without using language that evades the issue. Mostly, the finger will point right back at us.

Fort Wayne News-Sentinel

Joe Sheibley - We correct mistakes on the page on which the original error occurred, including Page One. We don't repeat the error, but try to make the context clear. We don't blame printers, copy readers or reporters. Not perfect, but if any editor can come up with a perfect solution for handling corrections, let's put him/her to work immediately on finding a way to avoid mistakes in the first place.

Calgary Herald, Alberta, Canada

James F. Scott - We correct factual errors in a box on page A2 (as does the Star Tribune). The main flaw is that this does not deal with the type of error that falls between a minor factual goof and a major blunder that requires a legal retraction in the face of a possible suit. A letter to the editor or an ombudsman column can handle some of these cases. But... broadening criteria for corrections... would address problems of omission or balance that are not always publicly examined or acknowledged.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Phil J. Record - We run them in a page-two box; Page One for major errors that occurred there. Normally we do not issue an apology, although I think doing so may be a pretty good idea. I sometimes think we let ourselves off too easily.

Edmonton Journal, Alberta, Canada

John Brown - We should avoid relying on semantics or hair-splitting to convince ourselves or readers that an error has not occurred. If an erroneous inference appears likely, we should at least publish a clarification or editor's note making the matter clear. We have had errors published repeatedly because we rely on our own uncorrected electronic database.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Larry Fiquette - Our corrections sometimes come out too succinct, for space reasons, and don't answer all the reader's questions.

Fresno Bee

Lynne Enders Glaser - We do not place blame for mistakes, do not express regret, but do rerun photos, if space permits, to correct misidentifications. I use my column to address balance, implication and things like "broad-brush statements." Staff hates it; the public loves it.