Journalists: Admit & Correct your Mistakes

From one mistake to the next

Journalists should always acknowledge their own negligence and rectify their own mistakes. One of the pitfalls of being a journalist, states author Clare Bruce, is that your worst mistakes don't go unnoticed. Mistakes can damage, if not ruin, the credibility of a journalist. Without credibility, journalists have nothing. In "Declaring War on Errors", journalist Carl Stepp states that errors, in the journalistic field, occur in up to 61 percent of all stories, far more than the media acknowledge. Based on those numbers, it's safe to say that author and journalist Craig Silverman is right: Errors are not being prevented, and they are not being corrected.

Listen to Silverman

According to the Canadian Association of Journalist, reporting must be, at all times, "fair, accurate and comprehensive. More so, when journalists make mistakes they MUST correct them". Silverman's blog, Regret the Error, helps bring to surface the various "media retractions, apologies, clarification and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the press". Unlike many of his journalistic counterparts, Silverman systematically exposes media mistakes and innacuracies. Silverman warns that "the issue of uncorrected errors becomes even more urgent when stories are published in a paper, placed online and then loaded into various databases. The errors of today become the errors of tomorrow when they are accessed online or from database at a later date".

Prevent rather than Regret

But, don't worry, there is a silver lining in journalistic inaccuracies. According to Silverman, journalists can avoid making slips and mistakes by creating a checklist (yes, a checklist) of "the most common facts in any story (names, titles, numbers, dates, etc.) and then adding a few items that you personally have had trouble with. [Journalists] should make themselves go through a checklist before finishing every story."

(pic via oldschoolblogging)