Papers must write it up when they get it wrong

Newspapers used to be infallible.

OK, they were never infallible. They just acted as if they were.

This may seem hard to believe at a time when the New York Times and USA Today have recently published extraordinary mea culpas acknowledging not just fallibility but blatant dereliction of basic journalistic responsibility. For most of their history, though, newspapers were about as willing to admit they’d made a mistake as -- well, as willing as President Bush is to admit he was wrong about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

Most editors long regarded the admission of error as unwarranted, counterproductive self-flagellation -- the airing of dirty laundry that would, they feared, undermine their papers’ credibility.

Thus, newspapers generally printed corrections only when they were threatened with libel suits or when their errors were so egregious that they had no choice -- and then they tried to bury those corrections in the back of the paper, next to the ads for athlete’s foot powder.

In 1967, the Louisville Courier-Journal and Times broke with that head-in-the-sand tradition and became the first U.S. newspapers to institutionalize the practice of routinely publishing corrections in a prominent, designated place.

Still, as recently as 1973, only 24% of newspapers with more than 100,000 circulation -- and far fewer smaller papers -- had a similar policy.

That number began to grow significantly in the 1990s, and by 1999, the most recent year for which figures are available, such policies had been adopted by 93% of newspapers with more than 5,000 circulation, according to a survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

We now live in an age of confession and -- the press lords be praised -- increased journalistic accountability. Respect for newspapers has been declining steadily, and editors have come to believe that acknowledging fallibility might help rebuild credibility, not erode it.

Since newspaper credibility has continued to fall, there is no way to determine if they’re right. Might public trust in the media be even lower if news organizations had continued to ignore their errors? Or has our society become so polarized -- and the resultant perceptions of media bias so entrenched -- that not even massive mea culpas can restore public confidence?

Perhaps the larger -- or at least more interesting -- question now, in light of the various approaches newspapers have taken of late with their mea culpas, is just what kind of journalistic sin requires what kind of mea culpa.

Most newspapers now publish multiple corrections every day, often prominently displayed. For mistakes bigger than a wrong date, misspelled name or other demonstrably incorrect fact, newspapers have instituted a variety of formats.

The Los Angeles Times, for example, publishes on Page 2 every day its “For the Record” -- a term chosen so that it covers not only factual errors but other kinds of mistakes, omissions and oversights as well. Last year, when a review of antiwar art characterized the Bush administration’s plan for war on Iraq as “imbecilic” and lacking in a “coherent argument,” The Times published a “For the Record/Editor’s Note” that said those comments amounted to “a gratuitous political statement ... [that] should not have been published.”

Splitting the difference

The Washington Post publishes such items under the heading “Clarification” -- as it did recently after printing a story in which Lori Witmer, the mother of a female soldier killed in Iraq, was said to have told a reporter that losing a daughter in combat was more painful than losing a son. The Post’s “Clarification” said, “Although the reporter’s notes of the conversation indicate she made that remark, Witmer does not remember making such a statement.”

In other words, “We don’t know if we made a mistake, but our source says we might have, and since we can’t prove the truth either way, here’s both sides of the story.”

The New York Times uses “Editors’ Note” or “From the Editors” to rectify, clarify or amplify “significant lapses of fairness, balance or perspective” in the paper.

That’s the rubric the paper used last month in acknowledging its deeply flawed, insufficiently skeptical pre-war coverage of allegations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That coverage was “not as rigorous as it should have been,” the Times said. “Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper.”

The tone of the Editors’ Note was reminiscent of the note the Times published four years ago, when it conceded that the paper “fell short of our standards” in covering the case of Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese American scientist who was released from prison after the federal government dropped 58 of 59 felony counts against him amid accusations of “serious security violations” at the Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory.

The Times subsequently published a two-part reexamination of the case, which served to further challenge the paper’s earlier stories, coverage that many critics thought had “stimulated a political frenzy amounting to a witch hunt ... that propelled an overzealous prosecution [of Wen Ho Lee],” as the paper’s “From the Editors” note acknowledged.

Excising the malignancy

Sometimes even a “From the Editors” note -- or any comparable construct -- is deemed insufficient to address journalistic malfeasance.

After the exposure of Jayson Blair’s serial fabrications, the New York Times appointed a team of reporters and editors to examine his work. The paper then published a 7,100-word report to its readers. Not long thereafter, the top two editors at the Times were forced to resign.

USA Today appointed three outsiders to examine charges that longtime reporter Jack Kelley had committed similar journalistic transgressions, over a much longer period of time. The results of that inquiry were also published in the paper, after which USA Today’s top editor also resigned.

But when the New York Times decided last month to re-visit its controversial coverage of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the editors chose a different and far more modest confessional: a 1,700-word editor’s note buried on Page 10 -- the journalistic equivalent of Richard Nixon’s “modified limited hangout” during Watergate.

No one’s head rolled this time. The top editors under whose regime these stories were published -- the same editors who presided over the Blair affair -- were already gone, and there was no appetite for further bloodletting at lower levels.

The note concluded by saying: “We consider the story of Iraq’s weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.”

I sure hope so. But what happens the next time a major newspaper -- the New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, any newspaper -- makes a big mistake? Will the paper publish a relatively brief editor’s note or a lengthy exegesis? Whatever it is, will it be published prominently or will it be buried? Will the responsible editors stay or go?

There is no clear standard for mea culpas. All we know for sure is that there will be one. If the New York Times, long both the best and the most imperious of American news organizations, could admit to major screw-ups twice in about a year’s time -- and then appoint both an internal standards editor and a public editor to monitor its future performance -- it’s difficult to envision other news organizations stonewalling their critics and readers.

To me, that’s a good sign.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read his previous “Media Matters” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-media.