Where the truth lies – Current events underline the importance of quality journalism

It’s not often a prime minister reaches across country borders and addresses a news organization directly with a plea to issue corrections and make false information right.

But that’s what happened when Fox News opted to leave an incorrect tweet, misidentifying a witness as a suspect in the killing of six people at a mosque in Ste-Foy, Que., and highlighting his background as “of Moroccan origin”.

The tweet – exposed to the network’s 13 million followers – stayed up long after that information proved to be incorrect.

After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s director of communications wrote a letter to the co-president of Fox News Channel, the post was deleted, as though it never existed.

We wanted to understand more about how misinformation can quickly spread, how journalists can protect their readers and viewers by getting things right the first time and how news organizations can approach correcting information on a platform that doesn’t allow for edits or corrections (we’re looking at you, Twitter).

So NATIONAL turned to Tim Currie, Director, School of Journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax, for a clear perspective.

What’s the responsibility of a journalist for correcting information they’ve put out there?

Accuracy is the hallmark of journalism. Being right and thorough in what we report is crucially important.

The ability of social media to send surprising information into the stratosphere is something we have to be conscious of. When an error creeps into content we publish it’s important we correct it as soon as possible and when the situation warrants… remove it.

How unprecedented is a national government asking a news organization to change/delete content?

You don’t often get a leader of a government calling on a news organization to remove content from its platform. Making a specific appeal to remove content is not common at all. It really highlights the effect false information can have on shaping political opinions.

The Prime Minister’s Office appears to have been concerned this contributed to a narrative of a foreign national being the source of this attack and that narrative was going to be harmful to the Muslim community in Canada.

In the landscape of Twitter and the need to get information out quickly, what are tactics and tools you teach future journalists to use in order to be fast, but also correct?

Verification is a huge part of what we teach – finding out the source of information – especially for when it surfaces online.

Making sure the people in your story are accurately described – suspect, witness – requires you have a strong understanding of what you’re reporting on. You also need a solid grasp of the implications of naming people allegedly involved in a horrible crime.

It looks like Fox was quoting other news outlets on breaking news, so we can see how an error can spread very quickly.

If only one news organization is reporting something, that can be a flag.

Is it common practice for news organizations to delete incorrect information quickly? Was Fox News’ behaviour typical?

Fox did acknowledge the error in its original story later, but from a journalistic standpoint it’s pretty unusual practice to let a tweet stand that’s clearly false. Twitter doesn’t let you edit a tweet or issue a correction. When you publish something false there’s a tendency to make it go away. To let it just stand there for hours is rather odd.

Removing a story or a social media post with the suggestion you no longer stand behind it is a pretty big deal. But just as big a deal is deleting it and pretending it never existed.

I would say it’s accepted practice to delete content that’s potentially defamatory. Several years ago some journalists suggested you leave it up there for transparency’s sake and issue corrections, but there’s more awareness now of the harm that can be done by leaving errors up there.

But when we do remove content from social platforms or the web it’s important we acknowledge that we did delete it because people will lose trust quickly if they find content changing, disappearing… it’s not good for credibility.

When we remove content from the internet, which should happen on rare occasions anyway, we need to make an effort to acknowledge we deleted it and to issue corrections (multiple times) on all the platforms on which it was published.

———

Learn more about the University of King’s College journalism program.