Speed kills journalism

Image by: Tomdebiec

Everybody can agree that accuracy in journalism is crucial for the creditability of any media but the demand for fast news is putting this virtue under serious pressure. 

I agree with journalist Craig Silverman who in the interview "We stand corrected: When good journalists make stupid mistakes" states that errors erode the creditability and that journalists should be better at learning from their mistakes. 

Too little time for accuracy

But at the same time Craig Silverman takes his passion for accuracy too far with suggesting that readers could be alerted by email if a certain article is corrected. Honestly, I believe that only a very limited amount of readers would be interested in that kind of service and overall I think that he has some unrealistic expectations to how much time and effort each journalist can put in a journalistic product today. 

By that I don´t suggest that we should accept more errors than before, but the circumstances which especially online-journalists are working under makes it more difficult than ever to produce decent journalism. The public demands news around the clock but still expects the same accuracy - this is simply an impossible task. 

Media-leaders are also responsible

Therefore it´s not enough to promote a culture of less errors through training, effective technologies and good processes as Craig Silverman suggests, which in my ears sounds very vague. Instead I believe that the leaders of each media should ask themselves if they want journalism full of mistakes or whether they are willing to give their journalists better working conditions to create more accuracy which in the end will raise the creditability of their media. 

BBC is one of the medias who has reflected on the importance of accuracy in their journalism in a series called "Accuracy and Truth". I believe that sooner or later the readers, viewers and listeners will realize that they are being feed with low quality news and then the winners will be the ones who worked the hardest not to jeopardize their creditability.