Friday, January 11, 2008
Do you believe everything you read?
A new study by Sacred Heart University finds that only 19.6% of those surveyed say they believe all or most news media reporting. We stress the importance of accuracy in reporting. The reason: Without attention to accuracy and detail, our credibility suffers. Just skim Craig Silverman's Regret The Error website and you'll realize we have a long way to go. Take this recent example, a correction that appeared in Newsday: A photo yesterday showed suspected drug dealers sitting among Hempstead residents at a town-hall-style meeting. The caption did not make clear that some of those pictured were not suspected of crimes.
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5 comments:
Well, it starts and ends with accuracy. A publication's reputation for credibility is really what it's selling. The problem is that we are all fallible in many endeavors. But where some far-reaching mistakes remain secret (doctors bury their mistakes, lawyers send their mistakes to prison), the mistakes of a journalist are printed on the front page. And they sign their names to them. We're in a public business that demands accountability. And the Web has created a legion of unofficial fact-checkers dying to hold us accountable.
I'm not convinced that is a bad thing.
It's a difficult idea to assess. On the one hand, it is the journalist's job to bring about important information to their readers and thus make sure that this information is in fact, well, factual. on the other, we are human, so mistakes are bound to happen. I agree with David that it isn't a bad thing to have harrowing bloggers across the globe making sure that we as journalists stay on our p's and q's. What would be ideal however is if this same tenacity and passion for finding error would be customary to those journalists who send out their articles in the first place.
Reporters are human, and as humans they make mistakes. Admittedly this is a business where mistakes should not be tolerated. However, there are very few stories where the mistake is big enough to warrant massive attention. A simple misspelling should not usually make a difference to the overall story. It does, however, make it a bit harder to take that publication seriously when there are a large number of tiny errors.
Also, I think it is a great trend that people do not believe everything they read. Yes it is a bad sign for journalists that what they are writing is being called into question, but really there is nothing bad about citizens taking it into their own hands to do research and become more informed. So really, I think it is a good thing on all fronts. Like David mentioned, it will keep the journalists accountable and also keep the citizens suspicious enough to not become gullible and easy to manipulate.
It's kind of damning when you think about the fact that less than one-fifth of all your customers (we'll call readers customers for the sake of the forthcoming analogy) wholly believe in how you perform your job. It would be like trying to pitch a movie with a star actor that only one-fifth of all moviegoers might possibly spend money on. Or sports fans going to a game where they only like one-fifth of the players on the team. Or the country electing a president that only one-fifth of the citizens approve of. Ok, maybe that's not the greatest example given our current situation (I'm actually a decent Bush supporter for the record).
Still, there are two major concerns I have with the reliability of this study. First, there were only 800 people polled for this survey, which may seem like a large number depending on your take. But when you consider the study says television viewers made a quick, drastic switch in "most reliable television news station" from CNN to Fox News (we're talking a 10 percent shift here in a few years), I think there might be some polling problems. Second, I think we might be asking the wrong question here when polling people about whether they believe "all or most" news reporting. The two most obvious explanations for the low poll numbers are the fact that anyone who has ever seen a correction in a newspaper (they're often in the front page section, so many people have seen them) has a diminished trust in the media and the rise of pseudo-journalism through paparazzi and blogging.
This news of media distrust isn't too surprising, but the fact is that even journalists are human and people continue to come back to the media even when the don't approve of us. Who knows, maybe that means ol' Dubya can run for a third term after all (I mean, who really cares about Constitutional amendments anyway?)
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