"Just the facts, ma'am ... and sir" : Thinking Out Loud : Blogs : News-Record.com : Greensboro, North Carolina

Just the facts, ma'am ... and sir

Roch of Greensboro 101 had suggested a post and comment thread on fact-checking letters to the editor, and I said I would begin one.

Sorry this has taken so long. As you may have read, we lost power last night.

Matters of fact in letters have grown more and challenging over the years. The phenomenon no doubt predates me but it seemed to peak during the height of the FedEx hub debates, when passionate letter writers tossed around all sorts of numbers and claims.

I still recall phoning one writer to question a statistic in a FedEx letter and she said she couldn't vouch that it was absolutely, positively true ... she'd overheard it at a cocktail party.

Similar claims have arisen over such diverse topics as the downtown baseball stadium, Iraq and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

So, we modified our letters policy, which is published in the paper every day, to include the following, to-the-point language:

"Please cite sources for facts and statistics."

Some people do that, adding copious footnotes. Some remain casual and even sloppy, misspelling the names even of local elected officials and railing about the city's role in school funding (in which it plays no role.)

The Internet hasn't helped. Some people tend to believe what they read there, including urban legends.

Are we responsible for fact-checking every letter we choose to publish? We do our best but our staff is small; there are no fact-checkers on the payroll, so we try to flag obvious errors. We also Google suspected astroturf letters and vet some letters through popular fact-checking sites. But you can spend hours doing that, and we have limits in time and resources.

So we don't always succeed in catching errors.

You can help as readers and letter writers by taking more care in composing letters and documenting your facts.

Here is what our internal handbook on processing letters now instructs staff members to do:

Fact-checking: Letter writers should cite sources for quotations and facts, especially statistics, that are not general knowledge either in the body of the letter or, as some writers do, in informal footnotes below the body of the letter. Otherwise, they will be filed.

A letter that is "filed" is not published.

We are tightening this requirement to ensure that letters are more carefully researched.

As always, we appreciate your thoughts on this issue.

Posted by Allen Johnson on July 12, 2005 10:18 AM | Permalink

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Just the facts, ma'am ... and sir

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