Accuracy and speed
Accuracy and speed
Sunday 22 November 2009
I don't go for the debate on speed v. accuracy. A senior Thomson Reuters editor says news today is "contingent, uncertain and provisional." I see his point. In today's unlimited mass of news and opinion, you are irrelevant if you are not constantly present. But you can't get around the fact that news that is not true is trash, and peddling it is a trashy activity.
But speed does matter. Reuters had a proud tradition of being first with the news, and Thomson Reuters still scores beats. No correspondent in the field survived for long if he/she was regularly behind. I still cringe to think I was 10 minutes behind with a crash at Prague airport in 1973. I also remember my frustration at seeing wrapups for which I had shed tears and sweat, if not quite blood, trickle slowly out of the World Desk some four hours later, scarcely changed.
You have to be both right AND quick. Phew! For a moment I though I was getting old and something had changed. It hasn't.
Marcus Ferrar
But speed does matter. Reuters had a proud tradition of being first with the news, and Thomson Reuters still scores beats. No correspondent in the field survived for long if he/she was regularly behind. I still cringe to think I was 10 minutes behind with a crash at Prague airport in 1973. I also remember my frustration at seeing wrapups for which I had shed tears and sweat, if not quite blood, trickle slowly out of the World Desk some four hours later, scarcely changed.
You have to be both right AND quick. Phew! For a moment I though I was getting old and something had changed. It hasn't.
Marcus Ferrar
Accuracy and speed
Friday 06 November 2009
Sean Maguire says: “Real-time readers understand breaking news is contingent, uncertain and provisional." The reality is most readers don't. If they see Reuters attributed, they think it's fact.
If readers cease to believe Reuters their only recourse will be skepticism, a short, slippery step away from out-and-out cynicism.
Corrie Parsonson
If readers cease to believe Reuters their only recourse will be skepticism, a short, slippery step away from out-and-out cynicism.
Corrie Parsonson
Accuracy and speed
Thursday 29 October 2009
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?
Philip Stone
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?
Philip Stone
Accuracy and speed
Thursday 29 October 2009
I don't know if Reuters has quite sacrificed accuracy for speed, but ● Sean Maguire's blog is unsettling. Methinks he protests too much.
Of course there was no golden age when all copy was accurate and no corners were cut for speed. We all wanted to be first. But it had been drummed into our heads that we had to be right. Editors insisted we had to check and double-check before running with the story, and we had to ensure our words meant what they said. Accuracy was Number One – that's what made Reuters different, better than the rest. That's why broadcasters would run with Reuters alone and would await a second agency for confirmation before going with Brand B.
There was undoubtedly a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) change of emphasis some years back when it was decided we had to carry market-moving news whether we could confirm it or not. Remember the debate about starting a rumour wire? We took a hard-nosed decision that once it was "out there" we too had to be "in there" and as long as we attributed it to someone else we were fine. We could always fix it later. The pick-up rules were loosened.
Sean now says: "To provide a complete service ... our policy is to pick up stories of significance that are being carried by normally reliable (?) media that are in a position to know what they are reporting. We protect our reputation by carefully acknowledging the source of the information and speedily checking its veracity."
So – get it out fast and check later. Does that really "protect our reputation"? First with the second-hand, unverified news?
So dangerous in the Internet age when many readers question the worth of "old-fashioned", slow, fact-checked journalism.
Sean may be absolutely right when he says that amid the Internet babble and argument readers look to Reuters to tell them "what is known and how it is known, with clarity and speed, regardless of whether we originated the story or not."
But amid the racket of rumour and conjecture they surely also look to Reuters for the verified facts. The only thing that will ensure the survival of Reuters news in the Internet age is that it remains the source that is trusted to be right. And trust is an awfully easy thing to lose.
Rodney Pinder
Of course there was no golden age when all copy was accurate and no corners were cut for speed. We all wanted to be first. But it had been drummed into our heads that we had to be right. Editors insisted we had to check and double-check before running with the story, and we had to ensure our words meant what they said. Accuracy was Number One – that's what made Reuters different, better than the rest. That's why broadcasters would run with Reuters alone and would await a second agency for confirmation before going with Brand B.
There was undoubtedly a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) change of emphasis some years back when it was decided we had to carry market-moving news whether we could confirm it or not. Remember the debate about starting a rumour wire? We took a hard-nosed decision that once it was "out there" we too had to be "in there" and as long as we attributed it to someone else we were fine. We could always fix it later. The pick-up rules were loosened.
Sean now says: "To provide a complete service ... our policy is to pick up stories of significance that are being carried by normally reliable (?) media that are in a position to know what they are reporting. We protect our reputation by carefully acknowledging the source of the information and speedily checking its veracity."
So – get it out fast and check later. Does that really "protect our reputation"? First with the second-hand, unverified news?
So dangerous in the Internet age when many readers question the worth of "old-fashioned", slow, fact-checked journalism.
Sean may be absolutely right when he says that amid the Internet babble and argument readers look to Reuters to tell them "what is known and how it is known, with clarity and speed, regardless of whether we originated the story or not."
But amid the racket of rumour and conjecture they surely also look to Reuters for the verified facts. The only thing that will ensure the survival of Reuters news in the Internet age is that it remains the source that is trusted to be right. And trust is an awfully easy thing to lose.
Rodney Pinder
Editorial appraisal objectives
Sunday 25 October 2009
What Thomson Reuters has undertaken is simply a redressing of a system that has existed for years. It was reasonably accurate when I was around (I left at the beginning of 2004) but it very likely will be more difficult to measure today in an Internet driven world. I wonder if Reuters has the means to be accurate and objective. This had been one of my major undertakings over those last years, and many editors and reporters alike did not view my account in a favorable light, particularly with respect to some of their staff’s reporting. An outside source probably is required to gauge such effectiveness, but here, again, the key word is cost and I imagine that issue is difficult to overcome.
Howard Luxenberg
Howard Luxenberg
