Writing off mistakes
In fast-moving stories, such as that of the Boston bomb arrest, errors are expected, but must be corrected, writes Paul Farhi
be the bombers.
On an investigative forum of Reddit.com, since removed from the site, users compiled thousands of photos, studied them for suspicious backpacks and sent their favourite theories spinning out into the wider internet.
“Find people carrying black bags,” wrote the Reddit forum’s unnamed moderator. “If they look suspicious, then post them. Then people will try and follow their movements using all the images.”
The moderator defended this strategy by arguing that “it’s been proven that a crowd of thousands can do things like this much quicker and better… I’d take thousands of people over a select few very smart investigators any day”.
In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investi- gation, according to law enforcement officials.
Those officials said on Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the internet.
The public remains “pretty understanding” of errors as long as a news outlet owns up to them, says Scott Maier, a journalism professor at the University of Oregon, who has researched reporting mistakes.
“The research shows that people who (are sources of) the news media know the media won’t get it all right all the time. There’s an expectation when news is fast-breaking and unfolding that reporters won’t always have it right.”
Indeed, stories like the Boston Marathon bombings are often misreported. Erroneous news reports about new threats were rife in the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.
In 1996, some media reports falsely identified a security guard named Richard Jewell as a suspect in the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing.
Similar false identifications followed the 1995 truck bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the 2011 shooting massacre in Oslo, Norway and the Newtown, Connecticutt, shootings in December.
People are less tolerant when mistakes aren’t acknowledged or the on-air speculation veers into ethnic or racial stereotypes, as the discussion of “dark-skinned” or alleged Muslim suspects did this week, says Emily Bell, a journalism professor at Columbia University.
“You’re inviting a very visceral reaction when you wander into that territory,” she says.
“The unintended consequence is that it casts instant suspicion on a lot of innocent people and adds very little” to the public understanding of the story.
Maier singled out the New York Post for publishing a photo of two men on its cover on Thursday under the headline “Bag Men”, implying that the men were suspects or accomplices when neither had been charged.
As of yesterday, the newspaper has yet to correct those accounts.
“If you’re mistaken, you need to examine what went wrong and why,” he says.
“I haven’t seen that kind of acknowledgment. It’s arrogant and it infuriates people.”
But Jurkowitz says readers and viewers have a short memory for any specific mistake. Just as the public doesn’t remember which news outlet got a story first, it also doesn’t remember which one got the story wrong, he says.
“I’d be sceptical that there is lasting damage for any news organisation unless they made a habit of this,” Jurkowitz says.
On the other hand, the bad news about bad reporting, he says, is that mistakes damage the media generally.
“To the extent that people are aware of the mistakes, it just reinforces the public’s distrust of the media,” he says. “It just amplifies the sense that the media doesn’t care about getting things right, that all it cares about is ratings, that accuracy doesn’t matter…
“The public’s opinion of the media isn’t high to begin with. And this doesn’t help.” – Washington Post-Bloomberg