Local TV News corrections

May 16, 2006 9:03 PM

I see corrections in newspapers all the time. And now come to think about it Ive NEVER seen my local TV news do a correction. Nobody is perfect. So how do they deal with mea culpas?

I was watching my local TV news tonight when I caught a report that was terribly misleading about the cost of a project. The report had the math completely wrong. 35 units at $700 =$400,000. I TiVoed it back and forth and thats what was reported. (do the math!)

I found the story online
http://tinyurl.com/h7x86

I don't have a dog in the hunt and have already emailed the reporter about this and wasn't happy with her reply.

posted by freeflytim to media & arts (17 comments total)

A few months ago the director of a non-profit was being investigated by the federal marshal for, among other things, misusing federal grant money. This non-profit has a name very, very similar to the name of the non-profit at which I work. While the newspaper mentioned the distinction, that our organization was not that organization, the television news completely botched it and said that my organization was the one under investigation. Our director called the station immediately and they made a retraction during their next airing (a two-minute thing at the start of every hour) as well as the next hour-long news report.

This personal anecdote is to say: I have seen corrections and retractions on the local news.
posted by rhapsodie at 9:33 PM on May 16, 2006

TV news gives you so much less detail and content than a newspaper that it's probably not as common to have an error.
posted by stavrogin at 9:45 PM on May 16, 2006

Former journalist here ... Corrections only very rarely come as the result of a lawsuit or similar action. 99 percent of the time, the correction is self-caught and self-reported. The newspapers don't *have* to run a correction unless legally forced to, or unless they want to. Television is the same -- they don't have to run a correction, so they don't. Now, running a correction is an admission of guilt, and a method of (partially) alleviating the problem. It's a good-faith thing. Television has no such qualms -- they're not going to waste their far more valuable airtime just to be nice.
posted by frogan at 9:53 PM on May 16, 2006

Our local award-winning news idiots ran a report one day on the strange and wondrous creature known as a "cabbit," the combination of a rabbit and a cat.

I was, naturally, recording the next day when the anchor came on and said "If you remember from yesterday ..."

So it happens. In this case, probably because n people called them while simultaneously laughing themselves to death.
posted by user92371 at 10:06 PM on May 16, 2006

Yeah, Im thinking instead of 'corrections' they are called 'updates'.
posted by freeflytim at 11:01 PM on May 16, 2006

local news don't correct stupid errors unless there is defamation, like in rhapsodie's story.
posted by freeflytim at 11:12 PM on May 16, 2006

err, doesn't
posted by freeflytim at 11:12 PM on May 16, 2006

I don't recall ever seeing any corrections either. I *do* recall this amusing story, however.
posted by equalpants at 12:04 AM on May 17, 2006

So, freeflytim, if you're still monitoring this thread, would you be willing to share the crummy response the reporter sent you? After reading equalpants' hilarious story it'd be interesting to see how the reply you got compares.
posted by Opposite George at 2:35 AM on May 17, 2006

The BBC just had a big mix up with an interview, where they had the wrong Guy. There is a clip of him on another one of their programs to tell the story of the mix up. Looks like everyone involved were good sports about the whole thing.
posted by vagabond at 5:15 AM on May 17, 2006

What freeflytim said, as well as this: Local news anchors/presenters will read whatever's put in front of them, with little regard for accuracy. They are, for the most part, not very bright people. As long as the names are spelled phonetically and *words* in the *script* are *marked*, telling them which ones to stress when they're reading, they're good to go. If the script says 35 units at $700 equals $400,000, then that's what goes out on the air. And, unfortunately, that's what usually goes up on the web site, too.

Speaking as a guy whose former job it was to look at the station's rundown of teleprompter scripts, select stories I thought were web-worthy, and edit those scripts so they were readable—fixing punctuation, grammar, spelling, math errors like that, etc. Before I came on board there, the station didn't really pay much attention to accuracy in its web stories. I can't tell you how many times I had to correct "grizzly murder."
posted by emelenjr at 5:48 AM on May 17, 2006

Another difference between print and broadcast journalism that promotes a difference in the policies governing corrections and retractions is the concept of a selected newspaper being the "paper of record" for a given area, where courts and public agencies publish legal notices and where news accounts are supposed to provide a public record of the doings of government. Since errors appearing in such outlets may in fact be viewed as actionable, the policies of such papers for printing corrections is usually prominent, and serves both the paper's interests and the public that it is trying to serve.

Broadcast channels have never served as the "public record" of choice, even though the majority of the American public routinely sees them as their primary daily news channel. For this reason, among others, corrections and retractions policies have never been as clearly stated and employed as in print media. And, as frogan points out, there is a definite cost to the broadcast company in terms of air time for making a correction, whereas a paper making a correction doesn't do so at any cost of advertising space, or material additional cost of journalist or editorial time.

When I worked for TV and radio stations in the early 70's, the only retractions that were ever made on air, were done at the behest of the station's general managers getting a note from the station's attorney to do so. And about that time, a particularly stilted form of broadcast reporting emerged, where the word "alleged" is thrown in to the story in front of every proposition or conclusion statement. Broadcast "news" is so far from what journalism schools teach, as to be an entirely different activity.
posted by paulsc at 6:50 AM on May 17, 2006

Local news anchors/presenters will read whatever's put in front of them, with little regard for accuracy. They are, for the most part, not very bright people.

Isn't that the truth. A couple of years back during the dirty-bomb fright-fest, Boston's allegedly beloved Natalie Jacobsen was reading a story in which she kept referring to "K-one". It took me a minute to realize she was talking about potassium iodide.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:02 AM on May 17, 2006

Also, people don't really look to newscasts for research. (Or at least, they won't until digital video archives become widely available in libraries.) So having a record of inaccuracies is good for posterity.
posted by chelseagirl at 11:26 AM on May 17, 2006

TV news, unlike printed news, is transient -- here today and gone tomorrow. The most common corrections are simple, done by the reporter tagging up the story or the anchor after the toss back from the reporter. If it's a real serious error that is caught immediately, it will be corrected at the next free transitional moment, like returning from or tossing to a break or another segment.

After that show is over, however, something would have to be gravely serious to warrant an explicit acknowledgement of the previous error. News people think in "news cycles." A traditional news cycle is 24 hours (daily newspaper), but TV newspeople have several mini-cycles in there: morning show to noon show, noon show to afternoon shows, afternoon shows to evening show. TV newsfolk assume that if they made an error in one mini-cycle, a correction in the next mini-cycle will suffice.

Also, most people don't record TV news shows, so it's very rarely looked at again by the viewing public.
posted by MrZero at 11:58 AM on May 17, 2006

I pointed out to the reporter the problem with the math and she replied ""If you continue reading in the next story on our website you will see a more detailed explanation of where we recieved that amount. "'

Which it didn't and thats not what was on the live TV news and she didn't feal the need to reply back when I pointed out that even if it did don't all stories need to stand alone? Oh well. like everyone has said.. once its broadcasted its over and its not like the original story was a big deal... It just rubbed me the wrong way when I heard it as misleading and bad reporting. Hopefully the reporter will try a little harder in her next 10 second story.

On a side note, Im not a nutcase who fires off emails to the media all the time, but, twice in the past year or so I have sent 1 email to the editor of the local newspaper and 1 to the weatherman on another TV station... both instances I was shocked and happily pleased when we had engaging conversation regarding questions I had. The joys of living in a small medium sized city!
posted by freeflytim at 6:43 PM on May 17, 2006

equalpants- In a sadistic way.. thats what Im looking for!
posted by freeflytim at 6:47 PM on May 17, 2006