Evaluating Direct & Indirect Evidence

As the third big question in this lesson, "Why Does Verification Fail?" You may be asking yourself that with so many layers of verification that a journalist might go through in order to piece together a story, how can they still get it wrong?

We’ve seen some bad examples, but also plenty of examples of journalists making a good faith effort to deliver the truth to you as it unfolds, using direct evidence and arm’s length evidence. The highest profile journalists and those who defend the profession say it is a discipline of verification.

If that’s true, why does the press get things wrong? How does the process of verification break down?

Some of those reasons include:

• Journalists rush to get the story first, jump the gun.

• Facing deadline, some journalists get sloppy or provide incomplete reports

• People (sources) give reporters incorrect information…or outright lie.

Jumping to get the story first

Competition in media is fierce, and especially so amongst the cable news outlets, who in their rush to getting the story out first, and capturing the audience, have sometimes reported the wrong information.

This is why we'd advise caution whenever hearing of a breaking news story. Be skeptical until hearing it from multiple sources.

Sloppy Journalism

In a particularly bruising example, the New York Times was caught when a story on of the most famous journalist of all time Walter Cronkite was published in 2009 after his death with a plethora of errors.

• Read the story with the errors included from the NYTimes.com

• Read the Response from the then New York Times' Public Editor, Clark Hoyt.

Since he has already used chemical weapons on his own citizens, it’s an important story.

But it was also wrong.

The reporter, Judith Miller, relying on off-the-record sources who wanted the U.S. to topple Saddam Hussein for them concocted an elaborate story and she reported it.

Surprising Democrats and Republicans alike, U.S. forces invade, route Saddam’s army and find no weapons of mass destruction.

It doesn’t matter how careful the reporter is. If the person who has the information that is needed decides not to give the reporter the truth…the verification process can’t always catch that, although when the Times investigated what went wrong, it found Miller, an intimidating person, had bent or broken many rules of the Times’ process of verification.