People will forget who got it first, but they remember who got it wrong.
This is the lesson that the Star may painfully learn from botching up the breaking news last week of the death of Keroche heiress, Tecra Karanja.
Among the first scoops (Grrr! There can only be one scoop) on May 3 about Tecra’s death, the Star ran with this headline online: “Keroche CEO’s daughter Tecra dies in road accident.”
Less than 24 hours later, that headline vanished. It was replaced with this: “Keroche heiress died after falling down a set of stairs.”
Which was it? What happened?
The initial story, citing a statement from Keroche Breweries, said mater-of-factly that Tecra died from a road accident, praised her genius as director of strategy and innovation at the brewery and stated that the family was requesting privacy to mourn. End of story.
Nothing was said about when the road accident may have happened. Or where. Or how. In other words, of the 5-W’s and “H” they teach on how to write a news story – What happened, to or by Whom, When, Where, Why and How – the first Star story answered only one, “What”.
That should have been a red flag.
Instead, the “scoop” ran with an unfortunate mistake, a road accident that never was, because by the next day – or ever – nobody heard again about a road or an accident involving, presumably, a car.
Rather, a drip-drip of anecdotes began to drop into newsrooms from Lamu about alleged drinking, an apparent fall from a staircase, a boyfriend still asleep upstairs, a rush to a local hospital, a helicopter airlift to Nairobi. Death.
The Star is not the first, and won’t be the last, to get fooled on a scoop. It happens to the best in the business. Often, newsrooms find themselves at a fork in the road, when they must weigh, at breakneck speed, the pros and cons of leading the pack with a scoop, which spells high ratings, or restraint to first verify the facts for accuracy, which spells credibility.
Of course, often they go with a Hail Mary, running to the press in the hope of striking both. Until it backfires. Does a cure exist for this?
“Eight Simple Rules for Doing Accurate Journalism,” posted online by Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) in September 2011, is still one of the best inoculations against getting a bloody nose from a scoop.
Here are the rules, according to CJR:
One, the initial, mistaken information will be retweeted (or flood social media) more than any subsequent correction. The devil in social media. Remember that misleading information tends to run like bushfire. Ask those who got “forwards” on May 4 that Keroche heiress died in road accident.
Two: A journalist is only as good as her sources. Who told the Star about a road accident? A press statement. Well, a press statement is not a sworn affidavit. Their raison d’etre is public relations. Not news.
Three, verification before dissemination. In the news business, apply the discipline of verification to everything you gather. Everything.
Four, people will forget who got it first, but they remember who got it wrong. Hands up, how many journalists are remembered for scoops?
Five, failure sucks but instructs. There’s no learning without failure. We will make mistakes. The upside is when you turn mistakes into never-again!
Six, if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out. CJR wrote: “Familiarity and history do not excuse you from checking out the information. Nothing does.”
Seven, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Sometimes we just want a story to be true. And so we run with it. Oh, well.
Eight, it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup. Don’t be afraid to amplify corrections. There’s plenty of room to do this online, at the bottom of updated editions.