When is TV News not TV News? Answer: when it becomes a newspaper. Several years ago, John D. Solomon, a New York-based journalist, while looking at yet another journalistic fiasco in the newspaper world, wondered why there had been little or no discussion about errors in the electronic (e.g., television) side of the news business. After talking to some people in the business, he got this quote from Paul Giacobbe of WJAR-TV in Providence, Rhode Island: "Television is much more fleeting," [Giacobbe said]. "Someone may hear or see a mistake, but then the story is over and they're on to something else. A newspaper is read and reread. There is more of a sense of permanence." (the American Journalism Review, August/September 2003). Indeed, Solomon also summarized Giacobbe as saying, “that most electronic media outlets are less aggressive [than newspapers] about soliciting corrections from viewers and listeners”. While on the surface, this seems to be understandable, the problem today is that because of the Internet, television stations have become newspapers. Local Media Look at the websites for the local Dallas/Ft. Worth television stations: KDFW (Fox) 4, KXAS (NBC) 5, WFAA (ABC) 8, and KTVT (CBS) 11 – now compare these websites to that of The Dallas Morning News. You will see that all the websites have the company’s name and heading at the top, banner ads and other advertising, indexes of links, archives, the date, the name of the reporter, and the story. In fact, the only real difference between the television station websites and the newspaper’s website is that the television station websites will normally have a video option – but since the video story is also written out as text many readers may see only the printed version. What this means is that television stations have become newspapers in the age of the Internet, because instead of providing content solely as transient video/audio, they also provide the written word in a searchable format on the Internet where it is now permanent. Corrections So why do you care? Because newspapers have spent literally centuries developing their policies and procedures on how they research and communicate the news, with the expectation (by the public, at least) that they take some care in how they report and deliver the news, and take steps to issue corrections when that reporting is wrong. Look at The Dallas Morning News website – when you look at their website’s sitemap, a link to “Corrections” appears at the top bar; now try finding “Corrections” at the television station websites – no, it isn’t there. The closest is KXAS (NBC) 5 that allows you to choose a subject called “Editorial Error” when submitting an email under “Contact Us” – but, honestly, many viewers won’t realize that “editorial” doesn’t meant the “Editorial Page” to journalists, but refers to the website’s journalistic content in general. So what happens when the television station gets the news wrong? In the past, the usual response would have been to ignore it, because the story would be quickly forgotten anyway. But now when a television news story goes out wrong, it is copied to the station’s website and archived in perpetuity, and it is repeated – indeed, plastered – all over the Internet by webmasters and bloggers who find the error better editorial copy for their personal agendas than the truth. Case Study Four years ago, a CBS-11 (Dallas) investigative reporter ran a story on Richardson (Texas) Mayor Gary Slagel, quoting some members of a regional board who questioned if he had a conflict on interest in a certain situation. But the news story went beyond just reporting what the participants said, it made declarative statements without attribution about what the Mayor may or may not have done. And it turns out that these statements were not correct. Among other things, the news story stated as a fact that Mayor Slagel had deliberately withheld a conflict of interest in chairing a task force on toll roads for the Dallas Regional Mobility Coalition (DRMC). After extensive research by local fact-checking website Rumorcheck.org, several of the principals in the situation – former Collin County Judge Ron Harris, former Dallas County Judge Margaret Keliher, and former DRMC Executive Director and former Plano Chief of Police James McCarley went on the record with Rumorcheck.org stating that there were significant errors in the CBS-11 story. It is especially telling that the two people who named Mayor Slagel to chair that task force – Judge Harris and Judge Keliher – specifically stated that they knew all about the alleged conflict of interest and appointed him anyway, confident that he would do the job well. And Executive Director McCarley said that as far as he knew – and as Executive Director, he was in the best position to know – most of the DRMC board members were already aware of Mayor Slagel’s situation and had no complaints when he was initially appointed. You can see both a link to the original CBS-11 story as well as the complete Rumorcheck.org article at http://www.rumorcheck.org/GarySlagelandtheDRMC.html . The Real Issue So, is the story here that a television news story done 4 years ago had errors? Actually, no. The real issue that should trouble you isn’t that there were errors in the story, but that these errors have been migrated to the more permanent medium of the Internet. Indeed, a quick Internet search will show several local websites and blogs quoting the erroneous CBS story, and the anonymous posts continually being made in reference to the erroneous CBS news story in these blogs as well as at The Dallas Morning News’ own Richardson blog keep the story alive. In the case of a newspaper, what would happen if the newspaper printed a significant error? Why, the next day, a reader would submit a “correction”, and the paper would print that correction in the Section entitled “Corrections” – a standard part of the newspaper’s layout. But the broadcast media? Not only do they not have a “Corrections” Section on their websites nor broadcast news, they – as noted above by Mr. Giacobbe – don’t even seem to encourage corrections. That is, errors on the websites of broadcast news sources are likely to stay on the Internet forever, where they can be used by webmasters and bloggers – both malicious and innocent – to propagate these errors until the end of time. And when television news departments do begin to implement methodologies for handling corrections, they need to realize a significant difference between traditional printed newspapers and television news department websites – that since printed newspapers could not go back and correct the printed paper in the archive, they developed the policy of publishing a standardized “Errors and Corrections” section in each edition, so that researchers could quickly scan printed copy for critical updates to a previously published story. But in the world of the Internet, the expectation is that if content is in error, then the content itself will be updated and/or annotated – think of Wikipedia, where the content is always kept current through constant updating by thousands of editors and contributors. Without this process being implemented at news department websites, the original stories are likely to continue to be considered authoritative, and will be quoted and linked to forever by individuals who have no idea that a correction may have been published somewhere else on the news department’s website. Questions Television News Executives Should Ask Themselves So, the important questions that managers at television news agencies need to be asking themselves, in light of their conversion into Internet newspapers, are Do you realize that by publishing news content onto the Internet, that you have fundamentally changed the paradigm by which you deliver news to your audience? Do you make it clear and easy for your Internet audience to submit corrections, as newspapers have traditionally done? Do you have an employee who is specifically tasked with reviewing submitted corrections? Do you have a content management system in place to be able to physically find and update/annotate any erroneous content in situ (in place), not in a “Corrections” section elsewhere? Do you have the Policies and Procedures in place so that employees and/or managers are empowered to accept corrections, validate them, and publish meaningful changes that correct the record? Now that television stations have become newspapers, let’s hope they have the wisdom to learn from the newspaper industry the best practices in reporting and delivering the news in the new “printed” medium of the Internet. William J. 'Bill' McCalpin Richardson, Texas