By Greg Holden
Over the past weekend there were several erroneous news reports in Chatham-Kent, all on Facebook, and some of these reports stumbled into online press releases. Thankfully none of these reports made it to pages of the CKReview. However that isn’t because we are any better than the other guys. It is because we don’t publish on weekends, if possible. A public accounting of the role of the press is in order after one serious breach of trust, and other falsehoods that came out.
The first false story to break was that a prominent Wallaceburg resident had passed away. The report happened due to an error made by a funeral home employee, who on their own accord decided to tell the media of what happened. The media outlet took them at their word and reported the death without reporting where they got the story or from who. Trusting their source they reported what was said without citing the source. Other news sites picked up on that and soon it was viral. As for myself, I was in the middle of writing the story for the CKReview, sensing the gravity in the story. When a correction and apology was soon published, the story then became the false report. The original story did not cite their source, they just announced the death. I did not have a source other than the news report itself. The CKReview does not have an apology published, perhaps the only local news source not to, because we didn’t run the story at all. Good luck, more than good sense, played a part in that.
The flawed reporting on Facebook did not end there however. Blackburn had another report, listed as a hoax on many websites. The story they posted was that a woman was to receive free heart surgery if 1000 people “shared” her story. Blackburn removed the ”story” once a few people had advised them it was a hoax. Today in more of a general interest report than a news report, 95.1 Rock radio reported on Facebook that people blink 20 million times in their lifetime. I did the math, and it would not be possible to do.
It is incumbant on the media to report the truth. No journalist I know of in C-K would knowingly mislead the public. People make mistakes, yes even in the press. Every single day there are questions we face that involve the ethics of what we do. Do we report an accused persons home address just because we have that information provided to us by the police? Do we call the homes of grieving parents to confirm the death of their child? Do we pressure people to take action on their employees when they make mistakes that make the news? Do we violate publication bans to make the news ourselves? Certainly not at the CKReview. Facebook is not a place to get the news, it is a place that news sources market themselves to you.
The press has power and really shouldn’t. We can influence people on important issues by writing about it. We can ignore other issues and leave them unsaid. This is why “fair and balanced reporting” is a mantra in this industry. There is no-one who writes full-time on news that is not aware of that influence, and the inherent responsibility to the reader. There is no universal agreement on how that gets applied however, and why discrepancies exist in reporting. Editors like to flatter themselves in thinking people can tell those differences and readers base their loyalty on agreement with editorial policy. Only a real news junkie ever notices how one news source covers a story v.s. how another does, but everyone is affected when bias reporting replaces fact-finding and due diligence. The anger I saw over the weekend for the press is justifiable. People however put too much trust in press reports in the first place. The press have to look at our own shortcomings by these recent events, who we regard as trustworthy sources, as well as how we report what sources tell us. The disappointment I saw comes from a broken trust. Don’t trust press reports, they are written by fallible people and are never the last word on any topic.
The reports you hear about from any news source can only cover part of the story. They are a guide to what is happening from one perspective. They are not written in stone truth. We can fall victim ourselves to lies, to bias, to errors that are reported. This is why we need to verify information. The police tell us a man was robbed, had a house broken into and there is proof, take a closeup of that broken window. Oops, turns out it was an insurance scam. Have the police knowingly misled the press? Of course not, they were victims of the scam themselves. Who would the press turn to if we doubt the police who tell us there was a robbery? We need to trust that source. As it is with funeral homes that report people have died, the police are a reliable source on robberies. If Joe Blow tells me Jane has died, I would verify that perhaps by calling the funeral home. If they said the same thing, the headline reads “Jane is dead!”. It wouldn’t likely read “According to Bills Funeral Home…”. This is what happened here in Chatham-Kent over the weekend and it has causes some degree of anger for both the press and the funeral home. Justifiable anger yes, however the readers getting upset need to re-consider how much faith they have in the press to begin with.
The frustration I saw firsthand also came with suggestions, one was to pursue a private business on their internal policies with some investigative journalism. That isn’t what the CKReview understands as responsible journalism. The press shouldn’t affect an outcome, we don’t make the news. We report it. Last fall there was a lesbian protest in Blenheim, and a reporter who was not from Chatham-Kent told the lesbians it was time to line up and kiss. The photo-op was irresistible to the media hounds. That is staging the news, not reporting it. Another news junkie suggested we double-check every fact. Nice if you can. On reporting a death, there is not much more that can be done than to hear a funeral home say the person is no longer with us. The press in this instance should have said “according to the funeral home…”, of course, but the original report did not say that. Other news sources picked up on the story and ran their own obituary. Should those news agencies have reported “NewsNow is reporting Jane is dead?” Yes. That was happening and was news, even if Jane was alive. But that would credit someone else with breaking a story. The originator of this story trusted a funeral home and has a good reputation in local news. He failed to report his source. Everyone else, the CKReview included, was prepared to report as fact that the person died. Some did.
Every local media outlet is affected, even a local blogger had to retract the story. The trust that has been lost will not easily be restored. Trust that is not deserving anyway. A responsible press is a serious concern to society at large, it is there they learn about current events, politics, crime, cultural events and more. When confidence is lost in what we report then confidence is lost in the rest of the system. Running around like a pack of untrained seals, and then demanding people “get out and vote!”, from our higher and more informed ground, while we rush to undercut each other on “news” that a loving person has died, and all to pad our bottom line; is not what the readers deserve, not what any outlet intends, not what we do on purpose. It is however how it would seem by this weekends results. Chatham-Kent deserves better than what happened, and it all could have been avoided by simply citing our sources. Hopefully the lesson learned here and is on the forefront of every editor in Chatham-Kent, and every reader. A responsible press cannot happen without a responsible reader willing to hold the media to account for what they write. That requires some skepticism. Blind faith is fatal for any journalist and should be for any reader. The media and it’s readership have a relationship, sometimes a strained one. Without that pressure from readers to be better, the press won’t be any better. They would rather you shut up, it’s bad for sales. Demand better from your local press and you will get it. We want you more than you want us. A responsible press cares about being trusted. A responsible reader refuses to trust the press. Be a responsible reader.
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