Accuracy is key in the information industry

In the instance of Pointe Claire Mayor Bill McMurchie’s expenses, several print and broadcast stories about them last month clearly lacked some basic fact-checking. Not only were the numbers reported erroneously, they were presented in such a way as to make McMurchie look like someone violating the public trust. This is not acceptable journalistic practice.

It seems that the McMurchie story is also an example of the increasingly all too common practice of one news operation acting as the source of news for other news operations. While I’m not absolutely certain this is what happened, the story appearing in La Presse suggested that a well-known public official was abusing the perks of his office. Unfortunately, other local news organizations latched onto the story as well, perhaps, as a way to show that they hadn’t dropped the ball.

In the case of CTV’s and CJAD’s reporting on this story, deadline pressure may have taken its toll. Having worked many years in a short-staffed TV newsroom, I know the temptation that overworked producers, reporters, and news writers have to simply go with a story, hoping that the competing news source got the information right, and it can be assumed that the fact-checking and verification have been done. Naturally, making these assumptions only deter good journalistic practice.

And what about the damage to McMurchie’s reputation? Unless newspaper subscribers, radio listeners, and TV news watchers are journalists or journalism professors, they seldom check with several news sources before coming to a conclusion about a particular story. To CTV’s credit, it aired a correction last week regarding McMurchie. Unfortunately, if viewers were not watching it, for all intents and purposes the correction is lost, and the mayor’s reputation remains tarnished.

It is, of course, the journalist’s job to uncover the wrongdoing of public officials, making sure they are held accountable to the public. While I believe public officials should have thicker skins when it comes to criticisms levied at their spending habits, I also believe they should be justifiably angry when those expenditures are misrepresented.

In all, I believe that McMurchie’s reputation will survive this journalistic blow to its standing. Still, the lesson here remains that any news operation, whose sole purpose is to inform the public, is obligated to wait for that phone call or e-mail to make sure the record is set straight.

The McMurchie story reminds all journalists that it’s not about getting the story first, second, or last, it’s always about getting the story right!

— Brian Gabrial is an assistant professor in the Journalism Department of Concordia University.