Journalists can be given the wrong information
Jumpy after the attacks on 9/11, Americans pay attention when the New York Times starts reporting that Saddam Hussein is assembling the material and machinery needed for a nuclear bomb in 2002.
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.
... and our last, and most potent question that the news consumer should always ask themselves when confronted with whether or not the verification process worked...
Did the reporter open the freezer?
In 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Brian Thevenot, then a staff writer for the New Orleans' Times-Picayune was among a dwindling number of reporters left in the city to cover the historical event. During a stint in the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, which was filled with survivors of the Hurriane, Thevenot overheard a story from a National Guardsman that so many people had died at the center that they had to pile the bodies into an industrial-sized freezer. Thevenot dug deeper, and when he arrived outside the food service entrance which contained the freezer, he asked to see it. The guardsman on patrol wouldn't take him to it, telling him that not even he, after seeing the horrors of combat in Iraq could stomach it.
Thevenot took his word, and published the story.
Later, he found out that the story was among the many that were based on rumor and myths that abounded in the chaos.
Thevenot published a correction, along with a reflection of the breakdown in the process of verification in the fall of 2006.
That same year, News Literacy was born as an undergraduate course. Prof. Howard Schneider, who is now Dean of the School of Journalism, started to notice that students, when analyzing a news story, were saying things like, “I’m not sure this reporter opened the freezer…”
It has now become a catch-phrase for News Literacy courses nationwide: “ALWAYS ASK YOURSELF: TO WHAT DEGREE DID THE REPORTER “OPEN THE FREEZER?”
If not, why not? And if the reporter is relying only on arm’s length evidence, it’s up to you to decide if the report is reliable. Is there enough corroboration? Are the sources trustworthy?
.