Social media lit up a bit this week when Howard Kurtz from the Washington Post included a line in a column, referring to Kenya as President Obama's "native country."
As you probably already know, some fringe folks known as the "birthers" question the legitimacy of the Obama presidency, claiming he was not born in the U.S. and thus is constitutionally barred from serving as president. When a reader pointed it out, Kurtz immediately said it was a slip and he meant, "ancestral homeland."
The Post has now appended a correction but many questioned how long it took them to do that (about three days, by my count).
What are organizations' responsibilities when it comes to accuracy? How fast should they correct errors? How does the social media sphere both exacerbate errors (such as the birthers linking to the story) and ferret them out (such as the reader who noted the problem)?
Friday, September 18, 2009
Accuracy, speed and corrections
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4 comments:
Errors should be fixed as soon as the organization becomes aware of them. I don't know if the Washington Post was truly unaware of this error for three days, but if they were aware of it they would have had misgivings about printing a retraction due to credibility concerns. However, it is naive to assume that a fact error about President Obama could go unnoticed by the public.
All of the issues surrounding President Obama cause a war of semantics. The difference between the words "ancestral and native" are trivial yet the birthers and any other group against Obama's presidency are looking for anything and everything to support their claims. Despite the similariety between the two words, the moment the word "native" sparked controversey The Post should have published a clarification for the author's the intent in using the word.
Such a long delay in correcting an error raises a couple of questions. Why would they wait that long? were they actually unaware of the error or were they overlooking it on purpose? and if so, were they overlooking it just to see the damage it caused?
Such a long delay in correcting an error raises a couple of questions. Why would they wait that long? were they actually unaware of the error or were they overlooking it on purpose? and if so, were they overlooking it just to see the damage it caused?
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