We Regret the Error, Susan Eder

WE REGRET THE ERROR
image courtesy of "something to chew on"

To operate within the law, writers who report the news, must be careful to report the truth. To make life easier for an editor, writers should also be able to provide grammatically correct copy. Journalists are conditioned to fear and avoid mistakes not only for ethical reasons, but also for fear of being sued. When journalists are conditioned to be afraid they get the message that accuracy is important. We respect what we fear and as a result we are more careful.

Of coarse teaching writers how to check their work for accuracy provides confidence in both the author and the editor. The author learns the truth and the editor learns to trust the author. Tools that help prevent factual errors also help to prevent some mistakes. But the fear of making mistakes doesn't always prevent mistakes from happening. However, mistakes are not always bad. Craig Silverman, award-winning journalist and author, says we can learn from our mistakes. "In fact, one of the best ways to learn how to avoid errors is to make them in the first place...making errors is the best way to learn information that you want to learn," said Silverman. Our mistakes teach us valuable lessons.

People will make mistakes no matter how careful they are. To err is human, they say. Mistakes may arise from a variety of situations. Rushing to meet deadlines, may produce errors. The time needed for proofreading is often short, especially for breaking news stories where information needs to be uploaded as soon as possible. A lot of mistakes come from the author being too close to the work. Writers should get someone else to edit their copy. Sometimes though, when time permits, a short rest between writing and editing helps to find grammatical errors.

Using spell check programs and other proofreading and editing software programs is a good start for checking work for grammatical errors; however. it is still necessary to manually check for mistakes. Simple words like "too, two and to," will never be recognized by these computer programs. (See my blog about spelling) Nancy Gordy also wrote a blog about spelling. Fact checking by calling on sources, doing research and checking on everything will help eliminate factual errors.

Silverman points out that mistakes are both good and bad and that "you can't learn accuracy the way you learn to add and subtract." The process of learning to be error free isn't as simple as one, two, three, but rather a set of rules the writer writes to help guide the writing of error free copy. This process must be learned. Accuracy says Silverman is "a process and a combination of learned behaviours, not a matter of memorization or motor memory." So through experience, awareness and education, errors can be reduced, but only if we are committed to doing so.

THREE EXAMPLES OF

RECENT ERRORS IN

LOCAL ONLINE NEWS STORIES

St. Paddy's green routine


by Chris O'Zdeb, Edmonton Journal, Monday March 15th 2010.

• This article has a couple of errors. In the first sentence the word korezone.com is separated by a space from the bracket before it. This looks like sloppy work.


• In the sixth paragraph the words "both hands" are used. This is redundant as more than one hand implies the use of both hands.

Auction for 5 orphaned kids


by Jenna McMurray, Edmonton Sun, Monday March 15, 2010.

• The title is misleading. I really thought that they were trying to raise money by "auctioning" the kids off. After reading the article I understood the fundraising was to help the kids. The headline would have been better if it said "Auction to help 5 orphaned kids."

Nearly 15,000 jobs lost in Alberta in February


CBC News, March 12, 2010

• In this article the writer uses the same words that are used in the quote. The quote says in the fourth paragraph up from the bottom, that "we are still attracting..." while in the next line the writer repeats "we are still attracting...." This made me do a double take. I had to read the text over again to make sure I did not read it wrong.


• The headline is so long that is does not fit across the page but rather the word February is on a second row. Reducing the font size would allow all these words to fit on one line.