Public editor: Online corrections essential for credibility

The news from the town of Whitchurch-Stouffville, headlined in the top spot of the breaking news lineup on thestar.com’s home page Tuesday morning, declared: “Town council votes itself 43 per cent raise.”

Almost immediately, online commenters began to weigh in on news about the controversial pay hike debated for months throughout the town: “They have got to be kidding, a 43% raise,” said one. Echoed another, “What were they thinking, taking 43%.”

Not long after, reporter Kate Allen, who had filed this news to the web in haste, realized she had erred and misunderstood the actual numbers councillors had voted on. In fact, it was an 18.6 per cent raise for councillors and 16 per cent for the mayor. Allen informed her editor, Dave Beer, and the online story was changed. So too was the “updated” home page headline, which now told a different story altogether: “Whitchurch-Stouffville councillors back down on massive pay raise.”

If incorrect information is published online and subsequently changed, did a mistake actually occur? Should readers be told what was initially wrong? Or, in the digital news universe, do updates replace corrections?

Reader Val Dodge, who read the two online versions of the Star’s report — and sent me screen shots of both — told me he was “disturbed” the Star had not acknowledged the original error.

“I think it is incumbent upon the Star to openly acknowledge online errors, especially ones as egregious as this one,” Dodge said. “It may be acceptable to silently fix a misspelled word or misplaced punctuation, but silently changing a headline so that it means the exact opposite of its original wording is far beyond what I would consider acceptable.”

This reader is correct. What happened here was not acceptable.

The Star’s accuracy and corrections policy applies to all content on all platforms. It says that errors, in print or online, must be corrected clearly, promptly and prominently. It also states, “Building trust in the digital world demands that the Star is seen to be transparent.”

In this case, readers needed to be clearly informed in an online correction that the first report was wrong. As David Cash, CAO and town manager of Whitchurch-Stouffville, said in an email: “The town is very concerned about this error as it immediately generated a number of comments on the website that left people with incorrect information, which further perpetuated the error.”

I knew nothing of this until I received Dodge’s email. The original story had been changed in the newsroom and the public editor’s office was not informed — as we should have been.

For almost 40 years now, since the creation of its “Bureau of Accuracy” the Star’s public editor (long titled the ombudsman) has had responsibility for determining and publishing daily corrections.

Like much else that is necessarily changing as newspapers evolve to become fully digital, the Star’s centralized print-centric corrections process must also evolve to reflect the reality of 24/7 publishing in which every journalist in the newsroom can easily amend/fix/update/correct/publish online content.

Digital content is published, updated and amended (necessarily) around the clock. That means everyone in the newsroom must take responsibility for ensuring that the Star is as vigorous about correcting and acknowledging online errors as we have long been in print.

Star Editor Michael Cooke sent a note to the newsroom this week to make this clear to all.

In recent months, I’ve grown increasingly concerned about the Star’s level of transparency about online errors, having come across far too many examples of the newsroom “fixing” stories without acknowledging mistakes.

I know no one likes making mistakes. And certainly, some journalists are reluctant to own up to errors. But we owe it to our readers to be clear about what we’ve corrected online, lest we create confusion about what is accurate.

Not all journalists agree. Some contend that mistakes online are rectified when a story is republished with corrected information. They suggest that the very ease of online publishing means there is little more need for actual corrections that tell readers what was first wrong.

That’s not the view of reputable news organizations that understand the vital importance of credibility. I’ve spent considerable time learning about online corrections policies of various newsrooms around the world including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, NPR and the BBC.

The New York Times strives to correct and acknowledge online errors regardless of how little time the inaccurate information was online. “The policy is to correct and be transparent about what was corrected when an error is made regardless of whether it’s been online for five seconds, five minutes or five hours,” public editor Arthur Brisbane told an ombudsman conference last spring.

All the organizations I consulted share the conviction that transparency demands we should not “scrub” digital content, that is, just fix it and hope no one notices.

Because, of course, someone always notices.

publiced@thestar.ca