Let's do what we do best

Technology constantly is improving upon itself and creating new forms of communication. Newspapers, magazines, radio, television, telephones, the Internet and who knows what is next — all are a result of technology and improved our ability to be better journalists. With that, they also improved our ability to become more ethical journalists.

With the spread of communication, our ability and speed to check information in our stories, in theory, should be near perfect. You can double check information with sources in person, over the phone, through e-mail or by message over a social networking Web site. You can check information you get in documents or from sources against countless other sources online, many of which are accurate. If discrepancies pop up, it’s easy to contact experts you look up on the Internet or talk to the people involved.

With greater technology, we can now figure out who good sources might be for stories. This is no substitute for going to an event, as proved by Jason Leopold in his book News Junkie, but it is a great starting point to do great reporting on an event. We also have the ability to easily figure out what other stories have been done on a topic in the past. Vast databases contain many papers’ works, so writers’ originality can be checked and new ideas can be easily formulated.

And seeing how many journalists in recent memory have been busted for making up sources, information and stories in their entirety, you would think that if nothing else, the fear of being caught lying would be enough to keep journalists ethical. After all, names can be looked up in a fraction of a second, a paragraph cut-and-pasted into a story is quickly traceable and made up events can be debunked by a quick check on the Web.

So why do these lies, in an age where our work should be better than ever, continue happening?

To start with, I think there’s too much of a rush to get things up on the Internet first. Leopold clearly wanted to be the one breaking news about the California energy crisis, and I think his situation is very similar to those other journalists across the country face. If you simply replace the words “California energy crisis” with any other significant breaking news event, I’m sure there are people willing to sacrifice a little integrity in order to be the one to break the news.

Integrity, to me, is putting out the most accurate and well-reported story you can. Yes, there’s always a source that breaks the news, but if you break with something that contains inaccuracies or is flat-out wrong, what’s the point of doing it?

The stories that break almost always bypass the copy desk, an essential part of putting out a quality story. The errors in a story could be caught within 20 minutes. Putting something up 20 minutes after another source, but having the story grammatically correct and error-free seems worth the wait to me.

I've had friends who go to news Web sites and read online editions of papers point out mistakes many of these sites make in a rush to be first. I was reading a breaking story about the Royals signing a player on ESPN.com just a few months ago, when it mentioned a player named Billy Buckner, a hot minor league prospect. I was confused for a moment, but soon realized they must have meant Billy Butler, a good-hitting outfielder. Mistakes like these make it look like journalists could care less about being right as long as they slop something together quickly. It’s an embarrassment to the profession.

There will always be competition for the title of who breaks a story first, but I still think there’s a demand for the best-reported, best-written story out there amongst the readers. It’s the reason I chose the newspaper path, because I think we ultimately have the ability to do just that. Leave the competition for who did it first to the other guys, and let’s put out the best work that we can. I think people want and need it.