We're not going to print it like this; it's lousy journalism! Next time you want to pin somebody's hide to the barn, you'd better use facts for nails!
So says Lou Grant, city editor, to an insufferably pretentious young reporter at the Los Angeles Tribune when he turns in a slanted piece of puffery. Just another glowing moment from the television drama (1977-1982) that I'm mad for; it's all shoeleather reporting, investigative suspense, an impressively nuanced reflection of media ethics, and a healthy dose of adorable seventies-ish humor. I totally want to be Billie Newman--poking around places she shouldn't, asking both direct and eliding questions, and getting the scoop on, say, the young Nazi leader who is Jewish. Or getting overly personal while working on a piece about prostitution.
I thought of the "use facts for nails" scene in "Lou Grant" when I read "Meet the Tilburg Checkers" in the Columbia Journalism Review. Fact-checking in journalism has got to be at an all-time low, no matter what the medium -- mass layoffs mean fewer eyes on each piece, and in this feverish media moment, speed is valued more than accuracy. In this void comes a team of intrepid Dutch journalism students participating in a new program that's so old-fashioned, it's radical.
Starting last fall, the school, part of Fontys University of Applied Sciences, has recruited fourth-year journalism students to participate in three-week long fact checking programs. Each morning, the students gather in a room to review the day’s news and identify stories that seem questionable. Then they go to work, hitting the phones and other sources to pull suspicious stories apart and see if they hold up to scrutiny. As of today, roughly 80 percent of the stories checked have contained some form of factual mistake, according to instructor and Dutch journalist Theo Dersjant. Their findings are published on a blog. Now, the people behind this program are hoping other journalism programs around the world will use the model to teach students about the importance of accuracy, and help keep local media in check.
... Once the program was up and running, Dersjant said he and the other two instructors “fell off our chairs in astonishment that there was so much wrong information in media.”
Now the fact checking program is enough of a success that the school has made it a mandatory class ... As for the journalists being put in the crosshairs, Dersjant said some have been very receptive to students calling up to point out mistakes, while others have been less than enthused.
“One golden rule we have as fact checkers is that we never publish a fact checking mission unless we have talked to the journalist [responsible for the original report],” Dersjant said. “At first, the journalists said what we are doing is a good idea. But soon the free newspapers and a press agency started getting a bit bored with us because we called them each and every week with more stories that are inaccurate. A lot of media cooperate with us, but one free paper said they will not talk to us anymore because they don’t think they have any obligation to us, only to their readers.”
Right, because that obligation to readers doesn't include accurate information. Media outlets that can't be bothered aside, this Dutch team is actually changing how journalism's done. ANP, the Dutch national news agency, was prompted by constant corrections to change how it reports on opinion polls and commissioned research. That is, inflated information and outlandish claims made in the press releases of "new research" commissioned by businesses is no longer accepted blindly by ANP.
How badass is this fact-checking program? How much do I want to see one in America? This Tilburg team is helping to set up a similar program in Germany. Let's get some of this action stateside too! We need the nails!
Oh ... and that tension between accuracy and speed in journalism? "Lou Grant" covered that one too.
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