Earlier this month, the Indianapolis Business Journal published a news story too early. They reported that this year’s Circle City Classic football event will feature high school teams rather than college teams as well as other changes. But the organizer, the Indiana Black Expo, embargoed the news until May 9. The IBJ published it on May 5.
It’s impossible to produce journalism without making mistakes. One way news consumers can judge the professionalism of a newsroom is by looking at what journalists do to fix their mistakes.
In this case, IBJ announced the changes before the Indiana Black Expo, its funders, event sponsors, and participants were ready to share the news. (Professional communicators would argue that before sending an embargoed press release to a newsroom an organization should ask for explicit agreement. But in practice, it’s not unusual for organizations to assume newsrooms will comply without specifically asking.)
Lesley Weidenbener, IBJ editor and assistant publisher, addressed the mistake in a column and podcast. IBJ risked their credibility with Indiana Black Expo and other local news media by reporting the announcement too early. After addressing the mistake, Weidenbener said she received a lot of feedback from readers who valued her candor.
“I think readers absolutely appreciate getting a little insight into how a newsroom works,” she said. “And even when you’re having to admit something that you’ve done wrong, it provides people that window that I think increases our credibility.”
Stories can include various types of errors
There are so many ways that journalists can get things wrong. Reporters can receive bad information or make assumptions that lead to major factual errors. Sources can make mistakes during interviews.
Some stories include minor errors, like misspelled names or inaccurate titles.
In other cases, reporters might leave out important nuances from a story. This can lead to a clarification, where more information is needed to convey the full truth. These mistakes are difficult to correct, but correcting them is critical for a news outlet’s reputation. Weidenbener told me that it takes a lot of effort for an editor to determine if a contextual mistake was made, and, if so, how to word the clarification.
Some news stories are accurate on the day they are published, but don’t hold up over time. When facts evolve and the newsroom fails to update the story, information becomes out of date. This happens most often in stories about criminal arrests. Newsrooms report that a person was charged with a serious felony. Weeks or months later, the charges are reduced or dropped making the original story no longer accurate. When someone requests to have a story removed from a news website because the details are no longer accurate, that’s called a takedown request.
How Indy newsrooms handle mistakes
Not all newsroom mistakes get a formal correction. Here’s a sampling from a survey of how Indy newsrooms handle corrections.
Print media, like the IndyStar and IBJ, publish corrections in subsequent print editions of a publication. Online news, which also includes both outlets, and nonprofit news like WFYI, Indiana Capital Chronicle, and Mirror Indy, usually include their corrections on the same webpage as the original story.
IBJ is unique in this market because they also keep track of their mistakes on a “Corrections & clarifications” webpage. I wish every newsroom in Indy employed this added layer of accountability.
At IBJ, a team of editors monitors the corrections email inbox to intercept readers’ feedback on mistakes. Editors are often responsible for making those corrections to all the places the story appears, including in newsletters and on social media.
WFYI includes corrections on the same webpage as the original story and notes the original mistake, for transparency. For each correction, the news director, editor and reporter verify the correction needed together, and the editor writes it. If a broadcast version of a WFYI news story has a correction, it airs in a newscast. Here is an example of a correction made to how the station referred to a Native American tribe.
It’s harder to correct mistakes that air on radio or television. In general, only major factual mistakes that appear on broadcast programs are corrected on the air. Lesser mistakes, like misspelling someone’s name, are treated as updates to an online story, and no correction note is included.
At TV station WTHR, which is owned by TEGNA, transparency and timing are also key in correcting mistakes. “If mistakes are made, we correct them quickly and transparently,” said Julie Wolfe, vice president of content, West Region, at TEGNA, via email. “It’s best practice to run a correction immediately (in the next possible time slot) as well as in the same daypart the original story aired to help ensure the audience watching when the error occurred sees the correction.”
Nexstar, the corporate owner of local news stations FOX59 and CBS4, has two standards editors and two senior content employees who work with local stations to evaluate corrections and takedown requests.
The Radio Television Digital News Association recently conducted research on trust in local TV news. They found that when a TV news reporter makes a mistake on the air and doesn’t quickly acknowledge it, it harms the credibility of the station.
“It’s very clear that sometimes when we’re looking at digital stories or print stories, you know, it’s a byline,” said Tara Puckey, RTDNA president and CEO. “But, I think people have a different association sometimes with the people who join them in their kitchen every morning.”
We learn so much about newsrooms by watching how they handle their mistakes. Corrections and clarifications are tools of transparency. Newsrooms that make good use of these tools build stronger relationships with their audiences. If you see a mistake in a news story, reach out by email to the journalist and point it out. You should expect to see the information corrected and a note attached to the story.
Don’t look at corrections as failures or shortcomings. Instead consider them a form of honesty. Everybody makes mistakes. When you do, if you’re a journalist, you make corrections and clarifications.
Tracey Compton is Poynter’s Indianapolis Public Editor. You can send your questions about local media to her at indypubliceditor@poynter.org.
Mirror Indy publishes the Indianapolis public editor columns as part of a partnership with Poynter Institute to increase media literacy and trust in local journalism.