Accuracy and speed

The Reuters news leadership team announced with great fanfare a week ago that the broad objectives for Reuters journalists are: “Own the big stories, emphasise higher-value content; be first, handle news quickly, understand customer needs, teamwork, innovate, lead, communicate, be a face for Reuters/Thomson Reuters, and stay within budget targets.” But where is "accuracy"?

When this writer was a senior Reuters news marketing executive the editorial objective was far more simple, “Get it first, but get it right.” There’s nothing in these new objectives about getting it right and several former Reuters journalists have taken to the pages of The Baron to question why accuracy is not there. And they have also shown their displeasure, too, at a public event the news agency hosted.

It’s an important debate, because within past weeks Reuters has been caught out on at least three major mistakes. Could they have been averted if more time had been spent checking the initial information rather than being the speeding bullet?

There used to be a firm newsroom rule - when a PR release hits, check back with the supposed sender to make sure it is authentic. Many times in the past Reuters caught out hoaxes by doing this, but has the pressure of receiving so many news releases and wanting to be first ended that practice? Just last week Reuters ran with an item supposedly from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that it was supporting climate change legislation being debated in the U.S. Congress. In fact, it was a hoax put out by a group called Yes Men. Reuters said it “issued a correction to its report as soon as it confirmed the hoax and subsequently withdrew the story and sent an advisory to readers.”

But that begs the question of why a call wasn’t put into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the first place just to check the PR release was correct? They would have done that “in the good old days”. Just because a policy is old doesn’t mean it is outdated.

And Reuters has been caught out wrong on a couple of items picked off TV. Again in the U.S. there was a CNN report of a gun battle on the Potomac River. In fact it was a U.S. Coast Guard training exercise. But did Reuters check with the Coast Guard before issuing its story? No, it ran with the CNN report, but the AP actually did call the Coast Guard first and it got it right.

And in the UK Sky News ran with the story that the released Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, had died and Reuters picked up on that. Al-Megrahi’s lawyer denied his client was dead – why didn’t Reuters check that before the pick-up? It used to be TV was a “tip” something may or may not have happened (just as Twitter and citizen journalism on the Internet is today) and the professional journalist then goes and checks out the supposed facts before committing to the wire. Or on breaking news what about that old rule that you had to have at least two sources before going with it, even if one is well trusted?

It’s very difficult in today’s Internet world to always be first, yet everyone wants to be. Citizen journalists are everywhere, Twittering away their beats. Are they accurate? Are they checked? 24-hour cable news channels can show what looks like a battle on the Potomac River, but is it really so? More important to go with the initial break and correct it later if necessary, or get it right first? There’s a reason why more and more people say they don’t trust their news sources, and events like these don’t help.

Reuters recently launched a new website to showcase how well it does editorially, listing its firsts, exclusives and the like. Among its amazing statistics is that it moves some 2.5 million news stories a year, 1,700 news pictures daily, and some 52,000 video stories annually. But life is such that for all of those millions of news items it gets right, it’s the ones it gets wrong that people remember.

The list of editorial executives on the news leadership team is a Who’s Who of current Reuters editorial chieftains. But perhaps because they are so close to their subject they can’t see all the trees for the forest (yes, an editorial cliché if ever there was one). One or two old timers, no doubt, with fresh eyes would have seen right away that within all of the new objectives the word “accuracy” was nowhere to be seen. Maybe the committee needs a couple of outside advisers.

Leaving out “accuracy” was a glaring error, and it came from the very top, so how can you blame those below when things go wrong? ■