Reporting in the age of social media

Does sending a Facebook message go far enough in trying to reach the subjects of news reports?

As former Markham councillor Howard Shore tells it, he was quite surprised to read in the Star last week that he “did not respond to a request for comment” about the Star’s report that he had been reprimanded by the city’s integrity commissioner.

Shore later told me he had not received any request for comment from the Star. On reading the report that he did not respond, he said he checked his messages on both his cell and home telephone, checked his email and asked his wife if she had neglected to give him a message from the Star.

All of that turned up no indication that anyone from the Star had reached out to him for comment on the integrity commissioner’s finding that he “did not conduct himself with appropriate decorum” when he left a Frankenstein mask on the parking spot nameplate of Valerie Burke, his rival for council in the 2014 election.

So what gives? Why did reporter Noor Javed state that Shore did not respond to a request for comment?

As it turns out, Javed attempted to reach Shore by sending him a message on Facebook. She did not leave email or phone messages because her contact information for Shore was outdated following his election loss.

The two are not Facebook “friends” and Shore says he never received Javed’s message. In a subsequent complaint to the public editor’s office, he questioned the accuracy and fairness of the Star reporting that he did not respond — a statement he believes would lead readers to believe he was dodging the matter.

Shore asked whether a Facebook message is “a valid source” for journalists to “truthfully” state that a request for comment had been made.

“I would suggest that sending a Facebook message to someone you are not actively engaged with in conversation is as good as sending a message by smoke signal,” said Shore, 50. “Or perhaps if I open my front door and call out your name, I can claim that I tried to reach you, too.”

I think Shore has a valid concern about accuracy and fairness here that goes beyond the question of whether Facebook is a valid means of seeking comment. Rather, this is about the measure of diligence required of reporters in seeking out people for comment about matters that put those people in a negative light.

“Getting the other side” is the essence of fairness at the Star. A single attempt to reach anyone — by whatever means — does not justify stating that someone did not respond to request for comment. Better to simply say that the person could not be reached for comment — or, in some instances, detail the efforts made to reach the person.

As I told Shore, Javed did not ignore his “side” of the issue that resulted in a reprimand from Markham’s integrity commissioner. Her article included his “defence” — that he thought the mask had belonged to Burke: “I intended no offence to Councillor Burke whether in the context of harassment or lack of decorum,” the Star reported he told the integrity commissioner.

Still, the story was not fair to Shore in suggesting he was ducking responding to the Star. To that end, we published a correction Thursday stating that the Star’s only request for comment to Shore was sent through a Facebook message and that he said he had not seen the message.

Javed said she attempted to reach Shore on Facebook because she believed he is active there. She expected he would see it. She now acknowledges she should have made greater effort to reach him by other means as well and, if she could not reach him, she should not have written that he didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“I did not take the extra steps I should have,” she said.

As Shore pointed out, his phone number is easily found through online telephone directories. Though he is active on Facebook, he said he uses it less now than when he was a Markham councillor. His Facebook page indicates recent activity there only every few days.

I go to Facebook only sporadically so I understand Shore’s questioning why the Star did not attempt to reach him by other means. There’s a good chance I would not respond to a Facebook message in any timely fashion.

But it is too easy to characterize this as a generational clash between a social media generation by now well used to connecting on Facebook and the “old” ways of reporting that demanded we find someone’s number, pick up the phone and try to reach them — then try again. Or, when the stakes demand it (I don’t think that’s the case here), go and knock on that person’s door.

The reality is that Facebook has become a valuable tool in reporters’ efforts to find and communicate with sources. But it is just one new means to reach people and cannot replace age-old — eternal, I believe — standards of persistence and tenacity.

Certainly, in diligent reporting, once is never enough. publiced@thestar.ca