![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
Part of a larger study about the experiences of private citizens who suddenly find themselves in the news, this paper addresses one aspect of that experience: how people feel about errors in the stories in which they were named. The study is based on in-depth interviews with 64 individuals who were named in newspaper articles in the New York area and a mid-sized city in the Southwestern United States. As in past, survey-based studies, findings indicate subjects are often quick to dismiss many inaccuracies. But it also emerges that for many subjects other aspects of the experience of being in the news matter more than the strict accuracy of the article, and that circumstances surrounding an article's publication influence error perception. The paper discusses four features common to subjects' encounters with the press that have bearing on how they interpret an article's content in general, and errors in particular: the newsworthy events themselves, subjects' objectives, subjects' expectations, and the feedback they receive from others.
Notes
1. In their cross-market study of 4800 news subjects, Maier and Meyer found that “Errors identified by news sources were generally not considered egregious. On a Likert-like scale in which 1 is a minor error and 7 a major error, the mean rating was 2.8” (Maier, Citation2005, p. 541; Meyer, Citation2009).
2. I use the term “news subject” rather than “news source,” although much of the literature reviewed in this paper uses the latter term, and the two categories overlap. Borrowing Pritchard's distinction between the two, news subjects are people who are named in news stories, whether or not they provide information directly to reporters, and news sources are those who provide information but may not be named (2000, pp. 39–40).
3. Tillinghast found that even on factual errors reporters disagreed with subjects half the time, and that they disputed a full 95 percent of subjective errors reported by their subjects (1982a, p. 18). See also Maier (Citation2003).
4. On a Likert-like scale from one to seven, with seven considered most severe, the most severe objective errors (incorrect addresses) received only a 3.3, and the most egregious subjective errors, at 4.21, were those in the “other” category, exceeding the next most severe subjective category (“Story sensationalized,” at 3.22) by almost a full point (Maier, Citation2005, p. 541).
5. In Maier's (Citation2002) case study of The Raleigh News & Observer, subjects identified 573 errors, but only requested three corrections. In a much larger cross-market survey of 2700 stories, only 1 in 10 news sources had reported errors to the paper (Maier, Citation2006). In both studies the most common explanation subjects gave was that errors were too minor to warrant reporting.
6. Scholars conducting accuracy surveys usually mail surveys as soon as possible after articles’ publication, while events are still fresh in subjects' minds. I found that my study benefited from a longer delay, firstly because I was more interested in how memorable different aspects of the experience were for the subject than in whether they could verify the details in the article with certainty; and secondly, because I found response rates much higher after the whirlwind that often surrounds being mentioned in the paper had died down.
7. All names are pseudonyms.
8. Interview, March 3, 2010.
9. Interview, August 4, 2010.
10. Interview, November 12, 2009.
11. All except one of the subjects in this paper agreed to speak to reporters.
12. Interview, October 30, 2009.
13. Interview, October 30, 2009.
14. Interview, November 16, 2009.
15. Interview, November 25, 2009.
16. Interview, November 25, 2009.
17. Interview, November 10, 2009.
18. Pilot study interview, April 1, 2009.
19. Interview, March 5, 2010.
20. Interview, September 16, 2010.
21. Interview, May 21, 2010.