On Sunday, June 28, the (Greensboro, NC) News & Record published an article by Lorraine Ahearn titled, "Greensboro College fending off creditors." If you read the story online, you will see that it is prefaced with this:
"Editor's Note: Because of incorrect information provided to the News & Record, this article misreported who pays the bill for a personal trainer for the wife of Greensboro College President Craven Williams. Williams personally reimburses Greensboro College for that expense."If you read through the story looking for the "misreporting," you won't find it. Without explaining that they've done so, with no notation of an edit or change in the pub date, the N&R quietly removed the "mistake," leaving one unable to read just what Ahearn had originally
Here is how the story now appears:
Here is how it originally appeared (highlight added):
Gone is:
"With charges ranging from $1,258 to $1,386 monthly, the club bill is for membership along with extra charges including twice-a-week personal trainer sessions for Williams’ wife."You can still find the original here.
[Postscript: I my opinion, I don't know that this even qualifies as an error to be corrected. The problem arose when people wrote letters to the N&R and commented at the original article stating that Williams reimbursed the college or directly paid for (depending) for his wife's trainer. That doesn't change the facts as originally reported, although, if the letter-writers are right, the original reporting does create a false impression. What would be more appropriate than deleting from the record would be a followup confirming, presumably from examining the records, that Williams has reimbursed the school for those expenses.]
Dunno about this one, Roch. If they made an error and it was a hurtful one, I think it's better to note the correction and get rid of the offensive and Google-able text. They noted their error in the online version at the top (and could have indicated at the bottom what was deleted) but I think removing something that is hurtful to Craven Williams is OK.
ReplyDeleteI would have noted at the bottom of the story that something had been removed to correct the facts.
Check your premise, Sue. What was the error?
ReplyDeletePicking the perfect word is always a challenge. My meaning was: they got erroneous information. (that was the error) They removed it because even with the disclaimer, it was hurtful to a nice guy (Craven Williams) and it was inaccurate (an error). I don't have a problem removing something that is erroneous and hurtful and as I wrote, I'd have made mention of that at the bottom with the disclaimer at the top.
ReplyDelete(This story edited to remove erroneous information ... yada)
LA said she it was a promotion from her column to write investigative stories like this.
ReplyDeleteReally?
It's not semantics, Sue. What was the erroneous information?
ReplyDeleteFrom JR's blog (which I assumed you had seen):
ReplyDelete"The one error they note in the letter was corrected when the source told us that they had given us bad information."
Summary: that Dr. Williams used college funds to pay for his wife's personal stuff at a country club was the erroneous information. He repays that money regularly. (Country clubs usually do not accept cash payments for services but send a monthly bill.)
Roch, I disagree that the burden of proof is now on Williams.
ReplyDeleteTwo people have come forward to say the story as reported was inaccurate, and the editors (presumably having reviewed the sourcing and evidence) saw fit to run a retraction and redact the article.
If Craven wishes to produce canceled checks, that would be a strong statement. But, in my judgment as an editor at least, the correction was warranted.
Ed, actually three people have come forward with complaints about the article. Two of them are hired consultants of the college and their assertions do not quite jibe with the third person's.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, what the N&R "redacted" was not disputed by any of these people (who merely claimed to be adding some additional facts that would bring greater understanding, but not which contradicted the original reporting.)
So we are left wondering what justified the redaction. You, as an editor, may be comfortable with presumptions; I, as a reader, would like something a little more concrete.
"that Dr. Williams used college funds to pay for his wife's personal stuff at a country club was the erroneous information." -- Sue
ReplyDeleteThat was never reported. YOU wrote that, not the reporter.
"He repays that money regularly." -- Sue
So some claim.
Sue, Craven Williams is nice guy?
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that you've never worked for Greensboro College.
I have a really hard time working up any sympathy for him. Seems like karma to me.
JR's blog on this topic is of no help. He says that college officials have pointed out inaccuracies in the story, but that they haven't; that the N&R corrected an error it didn't make.
ReplyDeleteIf you are able to divine what he is trying to say about this correction, you have better ESP than I.
And I don't expect him to venture off the reservation to add anything here or at Ed's.
Actually, you're right, Roch (mark this date!). The reporter didn't say that; I did. Let me try to be more accurate.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that money paid to a country club is the crux of the redaction. I made certain assumptions regarding that and should not have without stating those were my assumptions. However, that the N&R eliminated that "fact" because it was later either proved to be erroneous or their source retracted the "fact" is the redaction. Why they redacted it? I can guess only that someone might have changed his/her original information that was deemed, at the time, to be "fact."
In a perfect world, that's actually a responsible thing to do and I wish more news orgs would do that. I can't speak for why the editors made the decision, but the result seems fair.
Sue, that you made those assumptions is the crux of the problem and where Ahearn rightly deserves a wag of the finger. By reporting that the college has a past due bill from the country club that included personal training leaves the reader with the impression that the college would have paid it. The reporting is unclear in its incompleteness. But nothing has been brought forward to say that what was written was wrong. Additional information could be added to clarify, redacting accurate information is just lazy and deceptive.
ReplyDeleteWhat does this detail have to do with the overall picture? Clarify the assertion, correct it, whatever, the rest of Ahearn's story is not only true, but it's the tip of the iceberg. We all know that, so let's stop the sillies.
ReplyDeleteAnon, of course. I would not call paying attention to the journalistic tactics of the N&R silliness, but I agree this discussion is not about the meat of the matter.
ReplyDeleteRoch: "...but I agree this discussion is not about the meat of the matter."
ReplyDeleteCarnivore-iness: I'm discussing here (my "meat") how newspapers correct errors and not the information itself (I don't know the source or the correction source). What I've trying to say, obviously in vain, is that I agree with the correction and the format it took - I think correcting an error is laudable. If information was later proved to be wrong, then I say, "Fix it and notify readers that you fixed it" and move along to the rest of the story. There's obviously more to the Greensboro College story and it may, unfortunately, be applicable to other small private colleges. That's what I want to read about in the paper.
Roch, I think you want to make this about Lorraine Ahearn and I just figured that out (it's a holiday; I turned the suspicious part of my brain off). I don't want to play, thanks. I've said all I care to about this and I think I've made my point. It was all about the mechanism of correction.
"I think correcting an error is laudable." -- Sue
ReplyDeleteYou keep saying that, but keep coming up empty when asked to cite the error. What was the error? Not your re-wording, but quote the error for us.
"I think you want to make this about Lorraine Ahearn and I just figured that out..."
You figured wrong. From my comment at Ed's blog:
"[H]aving condemned gross reporting mistakes made by Ahearn in the past I feel an obligation to condemn what, in this case, appear to be lazy editorial decisions that hang this, unjustifiably, on Ahearn.
The clear implication of the original wording was that the club bill, including the personal trainer fees, were being paid by the college.
ReplyDeleteThat deserved a correction.
Ed, assuming the assertions that someone in the Williams household paid those bills are true and have been substantiated to some degree beyond what is publicly available, I fail to see how erasing the fact that GC was billed for the country club membership is a suitable correction.
ReplyDeleteIt seems clear that there was an error in Ahearn's reporting to be corrected. It's possible that everyone is lying and the college really did pay those personal expenses, but it seems more likely that she failed to ask enough questions about how the bills were settled.
ReplyDeleteThat's the main point here, for me at least: there was a serious mistake, which the N&R was forced to correct.
That leaves the question of how best to do a correction. I tend to favor crossed-out text with a correction immediately next to it, rather than scrubbing the text completely, but I think Sue makes a reasonable point about Google, and I think the point of transparent corrections is to be as fair as possible, so I get the argument for scrubbing in this case.
And I think the print correction should have gotten more play than the hidden-on-A2 slot it got.
"It seems clear that there was an error in Ahearn's reporting to be corrected." -- Ed
ReplyDeleteWill you quote the error for me please? What would you cross out as your preferred method of correction?
As a result of the method chosen by the N&R that you and Sue defend, a reader will no long know that GC is billed for Williams' club membership. Dumb.
As for Google, a search for "Greensboro college williams wife personal trainer" shows the futility of deletions to clean up the Internet.
Roch, if this is all about the word "error," then let's put an end to it. The highlighted sentence in your post, which Ed and I have repeatedly called the "error," is the crux of this discussion. Would you prefer that we called it the "sentence that could cause readers to draw erroneous conclusions?"
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, don't get so excited about an institution paying a CEO or President's CC membership. That's fairly common. It's not an aspersion. It's not wrong. It's business.
Second, the sentence made the average reader "assume" that the "personal trainer" sessions and other charges of a personal nature were paid for by the college and that's an error. Or an "erroneous conclusion likely to be drawn by a reader."
When the N&R learned through whatever means it learned that Dr. Williams reimbursed those sessions and that the membership (here's some speculation that is just that, speculation, but seems to fit) might be part of his contract and was no big deal in the real world, it fixed the "sentence that could cause readers to draw erroneous conclusions."
Nope, it is never gone from Google, which is why I suggested the new sentence at the bottom indicating the story had been corrected. It seems a fairly decent thing to do. As far as Ed's p. 2 being too small, I think newspapers have been doing that for a long time, much to the dismay of the wronged.
BTW, I'm (speculating but) guessing that this is the first of more articles. Hopefully, they'll address it there in a way that does not re-cast the "sentence that could cause readers to draw erroneous conclusions."
But somehow, I think you knew this all along and were making some sort of point. This is the last time I think it's worth addressing. Cross my heart.
Roch,
ReplyDeleteThe error acknowledged by the editors of the paper was in the clear implication that the college was being billed for private services over and above the club membership provided as part of Craven's compensation.
As I said, I get the point of scrubbing, and I know how I like to do things at my own blog. My preferred method here would be a note at the top acknowledging the error, e.g., "An earlier version of this article erroneously implied that GC paid personal expenses related to a club membership. In fact, the Williams family paid those expenses."
Then, in the body of the article where the previous sentence was, I'd just include the fact that club bill was overdue, without the part about additional personal charges.
Sue, at this point, what I find clear (unfortunately again) is the extent to which you will twist facts and distort reason to defend the status quo. The N&R did not "fix" the sentence as you have now inescapably, and rightly, finally, come to conclude they should have; they deleted it, erasing relevant, accurate and clear information with it. You find a fix that obliterates the fact that GC pays for Williams' country club membership okay because it's just business to do so. Fine. The point made in with the original reporting is that that it is BAD business to spend money on those things when the ship is sinking.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd appreciate it if you'd quit speculating about my motives, you are not very good at it.
Ed,
ReplyDeleteAgreed.