TEMPLE: 8-word gaffe ripples across Web

By John Temple, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 15, 2008 at 7:05 p.m.
Updated August 15, 2008 at 11:55 p.m.

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One lesson in journalism I've had to learn is that it's often the little things that come back to bite you.

That was certainly true this week.

What happened, I think, is an object lesson in how a local news organization like the Rocky Mountain News now plays in a global arena - and the increased responsibility that carries with it. In the old days, if we made a mistake on a story about a national issue, it's unlikely it would have been noticed beyond our circulation boundaries. Now we can end up on Keith Olbermann's "worst person in the world" feature and cited as an authoritative source by countless blogs who use our good name to make their case.

It all started with a single sentence in a story written just for our Web site: "Things you might not know about Barack Obama." The story was on our Barack Obama page, which is part of the special Democratic National Convention section of our Web site. This page and this story were created to improve our performance with search engines like Google. Our goal is that when people anywhere in the world search anything related to the convention, our site should be on the first page of search results, preferably near the top.

Influential publications such as The New York Times do the same thing. The Times has topics pages, which collect "all the news, reference and archival information, photos, graphics, audio and video files published on topics ranging from Madonna to Myanmar."

Our story, meant as a bright and informative read, included such tidbits as the fact that he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.

But it also contained this eight-word sentence: "Holds both American and Kenyan (since 1963) citizenship." We cited no source, but at the bottom of the story we listed three: biography.com, Internet Movie Database, Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The citizenship claim didn't raise any red flags for the journalists involved. They knew his father was from Kenya and didn't view the "fact" as a negative.

What can I say? I know this might sound incredible that we could have accepted as fact something that anyone who follows politics should have known was false. But another lesson I've learned in journalism is that if we can make a mistake, eventually we will - and the reason often is that even smart journalists sometimes let down their guard.

But it didn't take long before we learned that our report was raising questions.

On Friday we heard from an anti-Obama blogger, Texasdarlin, and began an exchange that resulted in us e-mailing the Obama campaign headquarters. Their response included the statement: "We understand the difficulties a delay in response may cause and certainly appreciate your patience."

If only they knew.

On Monday the story was viewed nearly 18,000 times. That afternoon the potential problem was brought to my attention when I received a respectful e-mail from Colorado Media Matters, a nonprofit that monitors what it perceives as conservative bias in the media. I immediately asked key editors to review the issue and to respond.

After we realized that our reporting was flawed, we removed the claim from the story Monday night. But we failed to add a correction to the story, as we should have, under our policy.

Then came the e-mails accusing us of being worse than scum.

"This is despicable and you should be ashamed of yourselves," one person wrote. "What kind of newspaper deals in phony political news? Disgusting."

And that was one of the nicer ones.

By Tuesday afternoon Media Matters was calling on its readers to contact us to "demand that editors take responsibility for publishing inaccurate information and that they inform their readers when content has been corrected, and why."

Around the time those e-mails came in, we already had done so. Media Matters was right. It is our policy to inform readers when content has been corrected, and we should have done that right away in this case.

Then came Olbermann.

What a mess!

But also an opportunity. We sat down with everyone involved and examined in detail what had happened and what we could learn from the experience.

Clearly, our sourcing had been inadequate. Sources on the Web in many cases should be links, so you can examine their credibility. When we discovered our source for this item had been a movie database - a clearly unacceptable basis for anything but movie data - we realized that not everybody doing this work understood our standards, even for items they believed to be innocuous. We also relearned the importance of visible corrections.

Painful lessons. All from eight words. Eight words that were enough to hurt the reputation of the Rocky and remind us that no matter the medium, our commitment to accuracy must remain constant.

John Temple can be reached at editor@RockyMountainNews.com or by mail at 101 W. Colfax Ave., Suite 500, Denver, CO 80202.

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Comments

August 15, 2008

8:03 p.m.

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GetReal writes:

So who is getting fired and when?

And what other flawed reporting based on inadequate sources have we been subjected to?
August 15, 2008

8:31 p.m.

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Sweetpickle writes:

Have you been taking PR lessons from the local police?
August 15, 2008

10:09 p.m.

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JohnSmith2 writes:

I for one take John's explanation as genuine. People screw up. Sometimes they screw up simultaneously, and their screw ups add up to more than the sum of each other.

By writing this column John Temple has sufficiently taken responsibility. Damage has been done, to be sure, but now we have John's column to link to as we debunk the damage.

Thanks John for owning up to this comedy of errors, and thanks to Colorado Media Matters for holding John's feet to the fire.

Let's move on now please. This won't be the last time we see problems like this (papers are run by humans) but I trust that John will ensure the paper does a better job of handling them in the future.
August 16, 2008

4:50 a.m.

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SirRealist writes:

Someone please help me out here. Do I understand correctly that the article claimed Obama had dual citizenship, here and in Kenya, and that the latter part of that statement is erroneous, or in other words that he is a US-only citizen? Where's the egregious defamation, lack of integrity, obvious "garbage" journalism, or issue worth being "fired" for? Even if the statement were true, what is the big deal? There are many, many people with dual citizenship. It is allowed by law, and it simply provides certain benefits to those who have it.

Recently, I have often heard it said that people are too "thin skinned" and worried about being politically correct. I guess I'm starting to really see it and agree with that sentiment. It isn't as though the RMN stated that the Obama's give money to the Black Panthers, or that his campaign is being funded by the ACLU.

People need to measure their response, and allow for the possibility of errors. Nobody should ever believe anything printed in a newspaper, magazine, blog, or other source to the point where they are ready to make some of the statements that are posted here. I'm sure that the RMN does their level best to report accurately, and to correct mistakes quickly when they are found. Each of us should be as precise and correct as we seem to demand from others.
August 16, 2008

5:38 a.m.

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coloradoismyhome writes:

Who cares? Nobody reads this conservative fish wrap anyway. Well I guess that I do. Great correction RMN - no blood - no foul!
August 16, 2008

8:16 a.m.

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jwbeuk writes:

huh, Olberman got involved. Wow, that means you torked off the loony left and one of their chief spokesman; the idiot, failed sportscaster now deemed to be a genius by the Starbucks crowd. Better beware.
August 16, 2008

8:58 a.m.

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asa_watcher writes:

"Eight words that were enough to hurt the reputation of the Rocky"
and absolutely not one thought of how it hurt Obama.
"left-wing bias" my a**.
August 16, 2008

10:45 a.m.

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blacksho89 writes:

"Big_D writes:
So you defame and say oops? What a piece of garbage. How about a front page story about your lack of integrity and an apology to Obama for purveying lies about him?"
Yo, D? What is defamatory about being Kenyan? Don't you like Africans?

Racist!
August 16, 2008

2:32 p.m.

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clyde writes:

Temple, you wrote a lot of words, but never clarified anything about his citizenship. Where was he born, what were (are) the laws regarding citizenship, has he ever been a Kenyan citizen, how long had his mother resided where, and all the other questions that your "gaffe" created? You never even clarified what you thought the mistake was.
August 16, 2008

2:39 p.m.

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Ambrose writes:

Had this unbelievably reckless error been published a few weeks earlier, it would have surely been cited by the rightwingnut Jerome Corsi as a "respectable source" for his lies.

Accuracy DOES matter. The publisher's apology does not change the fact that the reporting of the Rocky will be cited on hundreds of right wing blogs AS FACT and likely distributed via millions of emails as further support of the lies about Obama's past.

The Rocky should indeed publish a front page disclaimer. While the damage has likely been done, the paper has not done nearly enough to mitigate that damage.
August 16, 2008

4:46 p.m.

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crotchpheasant writes:

John McCain has American AND Scottish citizenship.
August 16, 2008

5:38 p.m.

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SirRealist writes:

Slayer, I suppose I can see your concern - maybe. But I just don't think it's the big deal you think it is. I'm a registered Republican, considering voting Obama strongly, and when I read the initial work it didn't adjust my way of thinking about him at all. The only thing I care about is that he's an American, and if he wasn't he couldn't run for the office. I sincerely doubt there is one in ten-thousand who would look at it and let it sway their vote.
August 16, 2008

6:20 p.m.

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SirRealist writes:

By the way, I didn't mean to make it sound like "the only thing I care about" is that he's American - there are many other issues such as where he stands on Iraq, social security, repeal of the patriot act, energy policy, etc. But with regard to this discussion of American and/or Kenyan, I couldn't have cared less.
August 16, 2008

6:42 p.m.

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ColoradoDave writes:

"and cited as an authoritative source by countless blogs who use our good name to make their case."

I have to tell you John but the Rocky does not have a good name. It is a laughingstock newspaper with less credibility than the New York Post. At least the NY Post is honest about their biases and their tabloid status. The Rocky, on the other hand, pretends to be an "our beat is the world" newspaper when in fact it is a local scandal rag.
August 16, 2008

6:44 p.m.

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HopiMedicineMan writes:

John,

I seriously don't know what you do every day. I have no idea, have never seen in this paper, the names of the Republicans running in either the Second or Seventh Congressional District.
I don't think you exercise oversight over your writers. Lynn is out of control and you know that. How many editors does it take to fix one obvious error, you could solve if you were on the job. A content analysis would show you have one conservative writer. How dare you call this a conservative newspaper.
August 16, 2008

6:49 p.m.

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clyde writes:

Conservativeslayer, what are (were) the laws regarding citizenship? What about the residency requirement for a mother when the father is not a citizen?
August 16, 2008

10:11 p.m.

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Mugwump writes:

The majority of Kenyans are Christians. Only the tribe of Obama's father, the Luo, are primarily Muslim. Almost all of Barack's relatives on his father's side are Muslim.

Jerome Corsi claims he has video to be released in the fall showing Obama campaigning in Kenya in 2006 for his Muslim cousin Raila Odinga who sought to impose sharia on Christian Kenya.
August 17, 2008

2:29 a.m.

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BikeMike writes:

Mr. Temple, your explanation mentions this "experience" as "opportunity" and your "global responsibility" and "commitment to accuracy". You neglected to include a single fact required in order for your story to make basic sense. Any one of these would have sufficed:

1. What was wrong with the statement about Obama? This would tell readers what you are writing about in the first place;

2. A correction to the statement. This would tell readers the same;

3. A link to the (now amended) page, and

4. A link to a correction (which would serve to announce a correction).

You are forgiven for omitting 3 and 4 from the newspaper.

Without 1 or 2, your newspaper editorial about your web page adds to the confusion and reveals your glee about mainstream re-reporting of same. But don't give up. You're not "high on the page" for http://www.google.com/search?q=democr... . Unlike the Denver Post, you're not in the top 10 yet.
August 17, 2008

3:50 p.m.

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JustTex writes:

We see & hear the Left constantly regurgitating outright untruth all the time.

Think of all the unfounded anti-Bush mantras about Hurricane Katrina, as just one example.

Gov. Blanco & Mayor Nagin both refused to order an emergency mandatory evacuation of NOLA, then they both refused to cooperate with FEMA after the hurricane came ashore.

With Nagin stating he feared liability from business leaders, & Blanco stating she feared if she allowed Bush to federalize her state's National Guard in an effort to better coordinate all rescuers involved, she believed that Bush could have & would have then sent the Louisiana National Guard on to Iraq.

Also, at the time, FEMA had a total of 1,400 employees. Their job, by federal mandate, wasn't & still isn't to provide the actual labor to do rescue work. Their mandate is simply to coordinate efforts between federal, state & local agencies as best they can, & to write federal checks for any needed emergency supplies.

The truth is, local Louisiana officials in charge of the levee system had wasted away tens of millions of local & federal taxpayer dollars on corruption & so called beautification projects. And, all things considered, FEMA did as good a job as could be expected under the odd & uncooperative circumstances they were forced by Blanco & Nagin to work under.

Once the home town hero General Honoree came onto the scene, he was able to work with local officials by simply bypassing both Blanco & Nagin, going directly to local agency leaders farther down the chain of command.

That's just one example of Leftist driven nonsense & I could easily type all day without running out of equally absurd issues to relate.

The fury of the Left over a simple misguided slip or "gaffe" is amusing John, & indicates the general shallowness of their overall reasoning.
August 17, 2008

4:33 p.m.

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HolierThanThou writes:

I like Temple's style in minimizing the consequences of this sort of yellow journalism. It's like the march to war in Iraq. Only the liberal "lunatics" and "fringe" media outlets questioned the big steaming pile of crap that lead to that debacle.

Of course, in Temple's view like that of many conservatives, we are instructed to ignore the consequences and highlight what's so good about whole quagmire. Never mind the thousands of Americans needlessly killed, the tens of thousands of Americans maimed for life and needing permanent medical care, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, and the trillion or so dollars wasted getting rid of an enemy of Iran. We now have cheap oil... oh wait, that didn't work out too good either...

Now I love your coverage of that war in Georgia. Ain't it special that you bury the line about the Georgian artillery barrage into Southern Ossetia that set off the Russian bear? Let me help you with your history:

When the sovereign nation once known as the Soviet Union broke up, many of its republics declared independence. Some of those republics declared that other smaller neighboring republics were part of theirs without first checking with the people who lived there. So, they disagree on who owns what and what belongs to which.

Georgia claimed that South Ossetia and Abkazia were part of Georgia but the South Ossetians and Abkhazians said they were independent of Georgia. They started fighting in the early 1990s and the newly formed Russian Federation sent in troops to make them stop. However, on August 7, 2008 the Republic of Georgia opened an artillery barrage on South Ossetia. The Russians, who greatly outnumber the Georgians, charged in and destroyed the Georgian military.

Now, why should we be taking sides in that mess? The answer is that without lots of enemies to keep us distracted we might take time to look at our own problems and do something about those.

Ain't it grand that the conservative press finally admitted they got some piece of trivia wrong?
August 17, 2008

8:39 p.m.

Suggest removal

jaymoveonorg writes:

Yep we need to listen to Obama and take it to the UN and get them to pass a resolution comdemning Russia for attacking Georgia. Doesn't Russia have veto power on the UN council?
August 17, 2008

10:26 p.m.

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rickg19611 writes:

"Now we can end up on Keith Olbermann's "worst person in the world"

Like that matters. Keith Olbermann's total viewership on an average night is 12 people (4 are drunk, 7 are stoned, and the other one is forced to watch it because the on/off and channel knobs are broken on his insane asylum cell TV).
August 18, 2008

12:37 a.m.

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Civility writes:

rickg19611, you are the last one that you described in your post.
August 18, 2008

8:47 a.m.

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Darwin writes:

MarineGrunt, you are correct. As an unaffiliated voter it is hilarious to watch the wingnuts from both sides.
August 18, 2008

9:23 a.m.

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primafacie writes:

So, apparently Barack Obama doesn't have Kenyan citizenship? Huh. Who knew?

Or cared.
August 18, 2008

1:18 p.m.

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edwardallen writes:

What "reporting?" You cite "biography.com, Internet Movie Database, Atlanta Journal Constitution" as being the source for the item. That is just repeating someone else's mistake. What is wrong with the telephone and calling Obama headquarters to have the staff there provide the correct information. In your reconstruction of what happened, did you find out what the Movie Database was used for? I can't think of any information it would provide for this sort of story. I am surprised you didn't use Wikipedia as well, given the notorious mistakes that database contains. Old fashioned reporting involved checking out all facts before putting them in the newspaper. What ever happened to the old editor's invocation to a reporter "that if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out first" before you print it?
P.S. I suppose you realize that your newspaper has now become another source for the Swiftboat books knocking Obama. What a disgrace.
August 22, 2008

1:57 a.m.

Suggest removal

BikeMike writes:

Keep making mistakes in the 'global arena' while considering yourselves a 'local news organization'. Don't attempt to apply that to the web.

The nice thing about Denver is a small world keeps getting smaller, and that's always been good thing. Don't attempt to apply that to the web.

There are subtle yet striking differences between community and 'community'.

Get used to one, or both, but get used to it. And please state the facts.

For example, I keep hearing the highway will be closed on the last night of the DNC. Over and over and over again. What night will that be? Is it a Wednesday? Would that help?

Home › News › News Columns & Blogs

TEMPLE: 8-word gaffe ripples across Web

By John Temple, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 15, 2008 at 7:05 p.m.Updated August 15, 2008 at 11:55 p.m.

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Published August 15, 2008 at 7:05 p.m.
Updated August 15, 2008 at 11:55 p.m.