Journalists are such a frequent target of public discontent these days that a lying newsman is considered cliché rather than outrageous. Media professionals are commonly lumped together single loathsome category with other tried-and-true targets of public loathing, such as politicians, hedge fund managers and Wayne Rooney.
Journalists’ self-image could not be further removed from public reception. By and large, journalist still tend to think of themselves as noble - or at the very least well intentioned - servants of the public interests.
From were stems this divide? We think, that one of the reasons, is the way journalists deal with their mistakes. Namely: not.
It is not very hard for an astute newspaper-reader to spot errors in any daily, even the more reputable ones. Mistakes can range from small typos, to full-blown deception campaigns. All have the same effect on the reader if they are allowed to remain uncorrected though: they undermine the trust he places in his daily newspaper.
Not only is error is unavoidable, it can be a learning opportunity. Failure might not be a progenitor to success, but it is often its harbinger. Why then, are the errors so rarely corrected? To err might be human, doing your darndest to ensure no one else ever finds out about your screw-ups is even more so. That is why journalistic error is often swept under the rug. A simple Lexis Nexis search proves that the last time the Daily Mail ran a correction was close to a month ago. Does anyone seriously believe that this refined paper has not made any factual mistakes in thirty-odd days?
At mediafailure, we intend to shine a light on journalistic error by closely following the mistakes British national newspapers make, and what they do to correct them. What the papers prefer to bury somewhere deep inside their columns, we will put on our front-page.
Over the coming months, we will follow the British dailies and keep track of the corrections they run and see if we can spot any whoppers they have left out. Feel free to contribute any epic fails you spot yourself, and come back next week to see which paper failed the hardest.
