CHRIS SEGAL
News Editor
The hardest thing for a journalist or a newspaper, like the Graphic, to say is “we were wrong.” That being said take a look below this column and read our corrections from past issues.
The Graphic has a written policy to run corrections in our effort to report on the Pepperdine community as accurately as possible. Media scholar D. Charles Whitney wrote, “that nothing is more crucial to a news organization than its reputation for accuracy and that nothing is more crucial to establishing this reputation than the honest, timely and public admissions of errors.”
Newspapers depend on credibility in order to tell stories and inform readers. Part of that credibility comes from the ability to admit mistakes and correct them. National newspapers have Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporters writing stories while the Graphic has students going to class and writing stories in their free time.
Corrections show that reporters are also humans and can make mistakes, but the right thing for a newspaper to do is to correct falsehood or misrepresentations of the truth. Correcting mistakes lets readers know that newspaper is still credible, even when they are wrong, as well as point out some humorous mistakes and spelling errors. Corrections have even become a popular section of newspaper.
Many Web sites and blogs update the general public on some of the more noteworthy and humorous corrections. The Dallas Morning News ran this correction last year, “Norma Adams-Wade’s June 15 column incorrectly called Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk a socialist. She is a socialite.”
Corrections serve many purposes — to maintain the newspaper credibility, to enlighten the readers to truth and to say we were wrong.
03-23-2006