To Err is hman; but Here, We Correct It

A Bristol, Tenn., reader hand-writes me regular complaints, sometimes two in the same week. This gentleman is bright, prolific, tenacious and decidedly biased for all things conservative.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But he sees conspiracies where none exist. And he also believes that I personally am accountable for every story, photo, cartoon, headline, etc., published in this newspaper, whether it was staff produced or not. That journalistic Utopian view includes fact-checking articles written by The Associated Press and originating out of Baghdad.

There isn’t enough time in a week for me to fact check every article we publish in one edition.

When this reader is right, though, he’s right. Recently for example, he was spot-on when he complained about one passage in an AP article published May 2. In a story on A4 headlined “Obama’s high court choice could be Hispanic, woman,” AP wrote of Justice David Souter, “In 2000, he was one of four dissenting justices on a ruling that declared President George W. Bush the winner of the disputed national election.”

While the Supreme Court ruling paved the way for Bush’s ascension into the White House, the ruling only declared that the Florida vote recount was unconstitutional.

A correction, or at least a clarification, clearly was in order.

“This statement is a false statement widely used by liberal media to discredit Pres. Bush,” the reader wrote me. “The Supreme Court did not declare Pres. Bush
the winner. The Supreme Court did not award Pres. Bush the presidency.”

Although the effect of the high court’s ruling was to give Bush the presidency, the AP story was flat-out wrong. But AP’s Washington editor informed me through a regional bureau chief that no correction would be forthcoming.

“The feeling of the Washington editor is that a [correction] isn’t warranted,” the bureau chief wrote. “He said that while the Supreme Court didn’t declare Bush president, it had that effect – Gore and his team quickly decided there was no legal recourse and Gore conceded.”

The problem is, the story didn’t say the ruling had the effect of giving Bush the presidency. It stated the high court declared him the winner.

Our corrections policy is listed at the bottom of the Readers Guide on A4 every day. It says we correct errors. Period.

That’s why on May 8, the day after the reader alerted us to the AP error, we published an unprecedented clarification on behalf of an outside news agency that refused to do the noble thing itself:

Clarification
The Associated Press wrote in an article published Saturday on page A4 that U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter was one of four dissenting justices on a 2000 ruling that “declared President George W. Bush the winner of the disputed national election.” While the ruling effectively gave Bush the election, the Supreme Court merely found the Florida recount unconstitutional and did not declare him the winner. While the AP stands by its story, the Bristol Herald Courier, in evaluating the high court’s opinion, believes a clarification is in order.

I warned AP that this would be our course of action if it didn’t at least clarify the Souter story.

Here’s what I wrote the bureau chief:

With all due respect to your Washington editor, the story said the Supreme Court “declared” Bush “the winner.” The ruling, which I’ve read and now reread, did not declare a winner or loser but simply concluded the recount was unconstitutional. Further, the opinion did not prevent Gore from seeking further legal remedies. I think as written it clearly is wrong and fuels a perception by many readers that AP is a house organ of the Democrats. I don’t believe that, by the way, but that perception is out there. No legal scholar would phrase the Supreme Court’s action in the way that AP did, not even Gore supporters. I wanted to give AP the chance to correct or clarify this. But at a minimum, I owe my readers some sort of clarification based on a clear reading of the high court’s opinion. That’s what I intend to do.

I recount this episode because it’s important that if newspapers want to keep their reputation as the most accurate news medium, they have to make every effort to correct errors, even if the wire service they subscribe to won’t.

Which brings me to another recent correction and a classic. We didn’t learn of the error until recently – 101 years after the fact:

Correction
An article that appeared in the Dec. 26, 1907, edition of the Bristol Herald Courier misspelled the name of a sheriff’s deputy who died in the line of duty.
His name is Lee Eldreth.

Yes, that was 101 years ago. And please note this same mistake might have been made in several subsequent editions of this newspaper, up to and including an article in Thursday’s paper, on Page A5.

Finally, one of my all-time favorite corrections was the one a friend of mine had to write. After writing that a woman did not return multiple phone calls for comment, the correction noted that she had died three months earlier.

J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at jfoster@bristolnews.com or (276) 645-2513.