JRN 300: Fatals Are A Fatal Problem

Fatals are what we call fact errors. And a fatal can be any type of error: misspelling a proper noun, like a name or a title. Missing a digit in a number. Having the wrong word in a quote.

Is that being nit-picky? No; that's journalism. Giving people accurate information that has been carefully vetted is what we do. Otherwise, journalism will be viewed as unreliable and untrustworthy by the audience.

There is no such thing as a "small" error in journalism. After all, the audience is fair to ask that if we can't get a "small" thing right, why would they trust us to get the "big" things right? Any error eradicates our credibility.

News is information people use, and like other things we use they need to be right 100 percent of the time. We would avoid an ATM machine that spit out the correct amount of money only 99 percent of the time. We'd throw away a GPS that was wrong one of every 10 times. When it comes to names and dates and starting times and quotes, the audience holds us to the same standard.

So do journalism bosses. At my last newspaper job in Las Vegas, our fatals rule was that in any one calendar year, a second fatal would get a reporter a written reprimand, a third meant you had to file a corrective plan of action on how you would avoid fatals going forward, a fourth would get you suspended and a fifth would get you fired.

And that was on me writing 250 stories a year! That's how serious it is.

So if I were to simply let fatals slide in this class, I would be doing you a huge disservice by letting you move up into the real world and letting you pay the price there. We need to recognize this here and now, and we need to fix it here and now.

Learning to write isn't journalism. Learning to organize information isn't all of journalism. Putting in a system of checking facts before, during and after writing and organizing information is what makes this kind of writing and organizing known as journalism.

Still, while this is discouraging, let's not get discouraged. The whole point of these exercises -- and getting fatals, too -- is to learn by doing, reviewing what was done, learning what could be done better, and then applying those lessons the next time.

And that's what we're going to do here, by redoubling our efforts to carefully fact-check everything we write.

Earlier this semester in some blog posts, I posted an accuracy checklist and a list of ways to avoid inaccuracies. I would strongly suggest that you revisit those two posts, and begin incorporating its suggestions in your writing routines.

Remember this: journalism isn't about writing; it's about getting it right.