Protecting Journalistic Integrity

According to PEN America, "Today in the United States, news matters more than ever. It is important to protect journalism at all costs. When journalism is censored and manipulated by those in power, it is an outright threat to the democracy that the United States was founded upon" (Vincent). As said, it is very important that journalists and their 1st Amendment right are protected as they are the sole source of news for people everywhere. However, this emphasized defense is more supported when society assumes that the news being published to the public is accurate and unbiased.

The journalism community is at war with the public when it comes to earning and keeping their trust as past mistakes have hindered the profession as a whole. That is why the importance of correcting printer or published mistakes is equally as important as writing unbiasedly in the first place. In an article on PR Newswire, they deep dive into Advice for Journalists on How to Recover from a Mistake. The biggest and most important step is the first one; check and double check your certainty. Fact checking is a job in itself at major publications solely to avoid careless mistakes, especially in fast paced news coverage. 

Via TechCrunch

If a mistake is made, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the next most important step to protecting the integrity of the journalist, publication, and entire industry, is to own the mistake and correct it immediately. Many stories will acknowledge an error with a note at the top of a story, correcting the false information and clarifying the truth. That is also the time in which they can cover all bases. This is sometimes used as a time to apologize if the error caused controversy or slander towards a specific person, which can happen in times of error. 

A perfect example of covering all bases was mentioned in the article we read from the Columbia Journalism Review, where the detailed a Time reporter misreporting that President Trump or his staff removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. The Oval Office immediately debunked this report, claiming that it was only blocked in the photo that was published. The Time reporter went on to tweet a dozen apologies and corrections for his mistake, specifically directing an apology towards the presidential Press Secretary. While this scenario is an example of a more careless and less serious mistake, these correction steps can still be used in more hard hitting and newsworthy instances.