Verification and Correction

Sabrina Fawley

sf339111@ohio.edu

In the article, "Twitter: Often first, not always right", the author notes two concepts that are the key to the future of news: verification and curation.

Verification and social media are becoming extremely important. Social media has turned journalism into one large mad dash − get it right and get it first. More and more evidence supports this everyday: wrong information about the Sandy Hook school shootings, Supreme Court's decision on President Obama's health care law, the Boston Marathon bombing and many others.

News organizations need to position accuracy above breaking a story before another outlet. When an organization breaks a story and it's wrong the organization isn't going to be trusted as it was before the wrong information came out. The public will remember that a news organization got something wrong and which organization released the wrong information. Then when someone looks at the news on a specific site, television channel, etc. that person is going to ask: Is this accurate? An article by Nieman stated that most people don't care where news comes from as long as it is right when they want it.

Photo Credit: anchor media

BuzzFeed had a similar problem when they posted "25 Unbelievable Pictures Of The Tornadoes That Hit The Dallas/Fort Worth Area."

Three of the 25 photographs were essentially bad journalism. Two of the photographs were from different storms. Another photograph was Photoshopped.

The major problem with the photos were that BuzzFeed didn't correct the misinformation in the way that a news organization should; the correction wasn't added at the same time the photographs were removed.

The BuzzFeed example ties into the article, "Twitter: Often first, not always right" because establishing trust is one of the most important things an organization can do to separate themselves from bloggers and the general public when it comes to social media and releasing news. When news organizations get facts wrong − especially when they don't accurately and ethically correct mistakes − the public is going to lose trust in these organizations.

When it comes to social media and the Internet it is easy to delete wrong information or a bad tweet/post and pretend it never happened.

An interesting article by Poynter.org, "Chat replay: How should journalists handle incorrect tweets?" discussed whether or not news organizations should delete wrong tweets or leave them and write a correct follow-up tweet. The article was published after the Tucson shooting.

Scott Rosenberg said, "Removing information you've already disseminated − sometimes called 'scrubbing' − always leaves open the possibility that you're trying to hide the error or pretend it never happened."

Rosenberg also wrote an article that goes hand-in-hand with this discussion. While the deletion of an incorrect tweet might help to keep other from tweeting incorrect information, Rosenberg points the alternative to deleting the tweet: keep the correct story front and center while maintaining accountability.

Verification is the most important step when it comes to news organizations posting on social media. One of the steps in verification is correction. If information is wrong, then it needs to be corrected in an ethical manner and not deleted.