CORRECTIONS ON NEWS ORGANIZATIONS' WEB SITES
Greetings!
I'm back from Arizona and attempting to catch up on my email.
Buried in all the spam was this gem from one of my NewsLib subscribers,
Jessica Baumgart with the Office of News and Public Affairs at Harvard
University:
"Linking Errors, Plagiarism and News Site Design"
from Bob Stepno's Other Journalism Weblog
http://radio.weblogs.com/0106327/2004/03/12.html#a194
Some of our veteran faculty members may remember Bob Stepno. He is one of our
School's PhD alums.
Stepno is a *blogger* among other things and the above is a piece
he wrote recently about how some news Web sites need to improve informing
their readers of corrections. He found several articles related to a
journalism error that were not linked together. The initial article that
started the reporting of the errors had no correction on it. He reports
this particular lack of links seems to have been an oversight on the part
of the newspaper (and he did contact the newspaper to inquire about
linking the documents together), but he raises other issues about how news
organizations handle corrections on their Web sites. Stepno's email
address is
Errors and corrections in the media are the concern of everyone,
especially news librarians and researchers. Read on for this message
posted on NewsLib from a newspaper librarian:
"I've had a situation happen twice recently. Once, I'm willing to
go on with my life; the second time calls for action.
"In both cases, the police reporters got the name of a perp from
the police report. In both cases, when the indictment story came along,
names were spelled wrong. . . . do any of you have a policy on how names
in the police reports are double-check? I want to approach the team with
some suggestions. I don't want to have to keep going back into the
database to make notes/changes.
"And yes, I realize the microfilm will forever be wrong, but at
least reporters search for all stories concerning a particular person, the
e-database will be right... I hope."
If ever there was a need for collaborative action by news staffs
and librarians on keeping the print and digital archives as clean as
possible, it is now. Certainly media accuracy/quality is everyone's job.
For more about the challenges of fact checking in our business, please
consult this URL developed for the Knight Copy Editors' Summer Institute
under Bill Cloud's and Raleigh Mann's direction:
http://parklibrary.jomc.unc.edu/factcheckers.html
Note the ten caveats for fact checking at the bottom of the page.
Your comments and suggestions, as always, are welcome.
Barbara P. Semonche, Director, The Park Library
NEW ONLINE AND PRINT RESOURCES IN PARK LIBRARY
Greetings!
WESTLAW DATABASE
We've added WestLaw to our suite of databases this week. [Earlier we added NewsBank. For a complete list of what specialized databases are available in our Park Library, please go to this URL:
]
WestLaw's access is controlled by a limited number of passwords. Check with me if you have special search needs involving this law database. This online resource offers more depth and variety in law and communication fields than Lexis. It will be an important research tool for our media law students.
THE LAW OF ADVERTISING
This four-volume print source is updated frequently by editors Rosden & Rosden. It is a publication of Lexis/Nexis.
Volume I includes:
* the relationship between advertisers and ad agencies
* the federal power to regulate advertising
* the Green Report II on recommendations for responsible environmental advertising
* and much more
Volume 2 includes:
* consumers' remedies
* criteria for representations, untruth, deception and unfairness
* law regarding specific statements
* the new food label
* testimonials and endorsements
* and much more
Volume 3 includes:
* investigations and rulemaking
* issuance of complaints
* FTC policy statement regarding advertising substantiation program
* judicial review
* self-regulation
* liabilities of the parties of advertising
* special advertising problems
Volume 4 includes:
* telemarketing
* direct marketing
* DMA ethics guides
* international advertising practices and regulations
* and much more
These volumes are in the reference section of the reading area. You'll find them under th unabridged dictionary.
One other source, which we've had for a while in our Park Library thanks to Tom Bowers, is the NAD/CARU (National Advertising Review Board) Case Reports. The NAD and CARU are the investigative arms of the advertising industry's voluntary self-regulation program. Their casework results from competitive challenges from other advertisiers, but also from
self-monitoring traditional and new media, including the Internet. This material, in print format and compiliations on CDs, is located in our Park Library stacks. Please let me know if you are interested in consulting this material.
Best regards,
Barbara
