A week ago, the University of Alabama’s student newspaper The Crimson White uncovered a scandal inside itself – that a freshman reporter had fabricated multiple sources, including professors, for multiple stories. These stories were taken as fact, published and some were even featured on the front page.
Although it may be easy to place all the blame on the reporter Madison Roberts or criticize the editors for not catching the deception until March, the fact remains that this or a similar case could happen at The Reflector, and it has in the past.
These situations happen at professional papers. In December of 2012, the Cape Cod Times wrote a front page apology to its readers – a reporter was caught fabricating sources for features since 1998. Jayson Blair, a journalist who worked for The New York Times, resigned after it was discovered he fabricated and plagiarized other journalists’ articles.
No newspaper staff avoids the possibility of incidents of unethical behavior, and one unethical person can ruin the credibility of a great newspaper.
As I transitioned into the position of editor in chief in 2011, The Crimson White dealt with the coverage of the tornado that devastated Tuscaloosa.
The staff’s coverage brought the newspaper national attention, informed the community it sought to serve and, eventually, won the newspaper multiple awards.
Throughout my time as a college student, I have come to admire The Crimson White because of its coverage of both that incident and the day-to-day stories the staff publishes.
More than anything else, the fabricated articles that managed to be published between Jan. 10 and March should be a wake up call to all newspapers, including The Reflector.
The Reflector seeks to publish the truth, to show multiple sides of a story and to inform our audience with information it needs to know. And, for the past two years, we have held a writers’ workshop at the beginning of the year to explain not only how to write but also how to act ethically.
And I’ve told the staff if I ever caught them fabricating information or plagiarizing, I would publish it on the front page.
That probably isn’t the most cheerful way to introduce someone to a new job, but remaining credible is that important.
When I believed we published an inaccuracy, I investigated. When people approached the staff with possible factual errors, we ran a correction if warranted. And we ask that if you disagree with our coverage or believe we have unintentionally published an error, inform us. If the newspaper does not seek for credibility and accuracy, there is no point in its existence.
In light of this incident, I and the rest of the editorial board believe we should look at our policies and see how we can improve so we can prevent this from happening to us in the future. After an editorial meeting Wednesday, we decided that in addition to the policies and guidelines that we already have in place to assist writers in crafting accurate and balanced articles, we would expand and improve efforts to ensure quality.
1. Communication and education: Although we already hold writers’ workshops and seek to work with writers one-on-one, the staff hopes to effectively communicate why we write. We don’t write to see our names in print.
We write to inform and serve. We are not important – the story and the audience is. In order to ensure this purpose is served, therefore, we hope to provide additional training. For example, we hope to have new writers shadow editors or experienced editors before writing their first articles.
Although using both a recorder and notes to ensure correct quotes are obtained is stressed, we hope to further push this.
In journalism, there’s a saying “If your mother loves you, check it out.” As much as I’m sure my mother would be offended by this, the phrase illustrates an important point.
Don’t just trust one person (especially an unreliable source). Confirm statements. Get other sides.
2. Writers now must provide a source contact sheet: From now on, writers must provide a contact sheet of all of their sources, along with a phone number and/or an email address. Several years ago, quotes from a source appeared to be strange, so the news editor called the source to check them out. Turns out, he had been misquoted. The Reflector was lucky that time, but it illustrates the need for accountability and sourcing.
3. All names of all sources will be checked: When the copy editors of The Crimson White caught Roberts’s fabrication, they did so through fact-checking a name spelling. By using the university directory, as well as other sources, we plan to do the same to ensure our sources (especially students) exist.
4. Blind checks: As editors, we will occasionally do blind fact checks by calling sources and confirming quotes and information. Although we do not have the man power to do this for every quote in every story, we also want to hold ourselves accountable in the same way that we hold the rest of the university accountable. We, obviously, are not infallible. As a student newspaper, we are a place where journalists develop and learning occurs.
Mistakes happen – both grammatical and factual. But we are also a serious media organization which takes its job to inform seriously.
We are, as always, open to suggestions from our audience in how we can improve. We exist to serve you and hope to receive feedback – both good and bad – from you in the future.
If a mistake is printed, we will do our best to correct it as soon as possible. As cliched as it is, we all are human, but the commitment of the editorial board to act ethically and provide you, the readers, with quality material has not wavered. As journalists, we owe it to our audience to improve our practices, admit when we are wrong as soon as we possibly can and listen to your voice. More importantly, as fellow humans, we seek to treat our sources and readers with respect and consideration.
As we implement our new policies and improve our copy editing and fact-checking procedures, we hope to improve our coverage so that we deserve your trust. Thank you for reading, for your support and the opportunity to serve you.