Eliminating Mistakes...Is It Truly Possible?

Picture from www.forcounsel.com

Ronald Regan once said "trust but verify."

However, in a world where news has to be delivered in a matter of minutes, thorough verification is highly unlikely and mistakes are unavoidable.

Mistakes in the media have been occurring ever since its birth. It is easy to say, "look there's another error" but more difficult to come up with a way to eliminate that error from occurring again.

Similarly there are many sites and articles devoted to finding errors in the media like Regret the Error or this article on discovering errors by checking the variables but virtually none that seek to come up with ways to eliminate mistakes. With media editors saying "I don't care if it's good, I want it by seven" errors are bound to happen. So what are the consequences of these errors?

Well, more and more journalists are loosing their credibility but only temporarily. Are these errors affecting their career and the media organizations?
Not at all.

My professor once told me a case where a fellow journalist was in Iraq in the 90's and was asked to say a few words on the radio from some Iraqi officials. The journalist failed to read the intro before.

This was his error.

To his disadvantage the intro had some very anti-semitic comments that he only realized as he was reading live on air. Yes the journalist lost his job with CBC but later got a better paying job at CNN.

Look at the New York Times. A credible and widely read newspaper that has published numerous articles with dozens of mistakes. Read this article for more. When an error is discovered and made public the newspaper simply writes a few articles explaining or justifying the error to regain its credibility and readership.

In "Of Media Mistakes and Explanations", Washington Post's Howard Kurtz examined the ways in which the media dealt with errors through media transparency. Kurtz argued that explaining the errors in fact helped the publications.

Some journalists try to justify their mistakes by delving into the psychological view of error. Alina Tugend published an article in the New York Times that says mistakes are healthy and the only way we can truly learn is when we are persuaded to make them.

What does all this mean?
Make mistakes, acknowledge them, learn from them, then move on...