| By Randall
McCauley, Special to PoliticsWatch.com (August 2, 2001)
In
his book A Reporter's Life, Walter Cronkite details his
experiences as a young reporter in Kansas City working for the
United Press.
Kansas
City was a hub of sorts, newswires from the east and west coasts
culminated there and both the Associated Press and the United
Press had huge operations in town. Quick and clear writing was the
order of the day, but equally important was accuracy, since the
client newspapers of both wire services would compare stories,
fact by fact.
Imagine.
Every story checked every day by a competitor, tidbit by tidbit.
Get it wrong often enough and jobs could be at stake, to say
nothing of credibility.
Nice
story, why is it relevant you ask?
This
weekend there were two interesting examples of the media getting
it wrong, one rather hilarious the other more serious. Both beg
the question, who or what oversees the media?
Hilarious
... It seems the Ottawa Sun misses this scribbler. So much
so, they took a pot shot or two while enjoining readers to visit
the PoliticsWatch.com website to read its newest columnist.
Only
one problem, while all three columns are on the website, my name
and picture on each one, the Sun managed to spell my name wrong
and get the subject matter of one column wrong. Oops.
Serious
... The Globe and Mail had a lengthy piece in its Saturday
edition about the CBC's flagship newsmagazine, the fifth estate,
and whether it will appeal two court cases it lost, cases that resulted
in the highest libel damages in Canadian history. The CBC recently
struck out a second time, losing both appeals to the tune of
$3 million in damages paid to accomplished physicians, Dr.
Frans Leenen of Ottawa and Dr. Martin Myers of Toronto.
Huge
oops. Especially since taxpayers get stuck with the CBC's legal
bills.
In
the first instance, the 27 people who read or care about the Sun's
Parliament Hill gossip section probably laughed to themselves and
quietly moved on to more important things.
But
if minor, easily verifiable facts are wrong, what does that say
about the facts in more important and complex stories Canadians
care about, like health care?
With
respect to the fifth estate, nobody is laughing, certainly not the
Leenen and Myers families who have gone to great expense to defend
their integrity, careers and character. (That would be a great
human interest story for the media, how the families have been
affected by what the courts concluded was the CBC's "very
serious libel".)
In
both cases, it seems that a journalist or two goofed. No
consequences in the first case, big consequences in the second.
But what happens to all the cases that fall somewhere in between?
How does a newspaper reader know if the stories he or she reads
every day are accurate and what are the penalties for getting it
wrong?
The
short answers are, you don't know and there is no penalty.
Politicians
are quite rightly scrutinized by the media and the Canadian public
on a daily basis. Besides, if you don't like your MP, you can vote
them out. But what about journalists?
For
example, a well-known columnist recently wrote that David
Collenette, the Minister of Transport, is to become the Canadian
High Commissioner to London.
Not
true, he's wrong. The Minister himself has said as much.
The
fact that other reporters ignored the story tells you what they
thought of it. But where are the checks and balances? How do
readers know if a story is bogus? Reporters don't dump on their
colleagues like politicians do.
One
avenue of appeal is provincial or regional press councils, which
will listen to complaints against newspapers free of charge.
Newspapers agree to print the results of the complaints, which
essentially means they bury stories about cases they lose and even
some of the winners. Hardly worth publishing the Council's
decisions if nobody reads them. Ever seen a banner headline that
reads "Paper blows it; facts wrong says Council". But
you see headlines every day explaining how politicians get it
wrong or foul up.
As
it is now, most Canadians don't know press councils exist and in
Ontario for example, complaints numbered fewer than 130 in
2000.
To
be effective, press councils would have to grow in size by leaps
and bounds, include electronic media and be better funded, say by
member news organizations. Papers, TV and radio news shows would
have to prominently publish (say on the same page or time slot
where the original story ran) what they got wrong. Increased
scrutiny would result in a better product, one need look no
further than how governing and campaigning have changed as the
public learn more and more about how government works.
A
less complicated solution would be for news organizations to
simply include a regular segment on what they got wrong and what
they are doing to avoid making the same mistake. Don't hold your
breath.
Since
both journalists and politicians have a shared responsibility to
the Canadian public there must be a mechanism where the former is
scrutinized a little more like the later.
Anything that allows Canadians to better differentiate the
good, the bad and the ugly among news organizations, will make
them all better.
Why
not try? If I am wrong, I will write a column correcting myself.
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