Good Journalistic Advice from the Howard 100 News Team

For those with satellite radio subscriptions who listen to the Howard Stern Show, the Howard 100 News team actually gives a solid piece of journalistic advice, albeit in a humorous fashion. The tag line they use in one of their promos is "If you mother says she loves you, check her sources."

While I take it on faith that my mother loves me, after all she is giving first hand testimony to that fact, when it comes to news-worthy leads, I check everything. Recently, for example, It was suggested that I write a news story about October 5th being the most popular birthday in the USA by the News Director of the Yahoo! Contributor Network. He generally provides me with pretty solid leads, sometimes offering me contact info. for specific news-worthy leads and suggesting article topics that he'd like to pitch to the Yahoo! News front page folks.

Sometimes they pan out and sometimes they don't (and sometimes they require extraordinary effort on my part: "If you can find someone who was present at 'X' event 60 years ago, we'd like to publish an interview with them."). That's great, I am thankful and lucky to have such a good relationship with the person who decides whether to pay me for an article. I pursue the leads offered to the best of my ability whether I think they are likely to be profitable to me or not, often investing many hours in research before I really know whether there is a story there or not.

The October 5th birthday story was no different. I accepted the challenge and went to work, assuming that the premise was true. Indeed, at first it seemed that every web reference agreed. October 5th is the most popular date for birthdays in the USA because it coincides with a New Year's Eve conception, they said. Hmmm. I was born on October 2nd, which is certainly within the big part of the bell curve for those babies conceived on the same date as those born on October 5th. So I asked my mother, "Is it likely that I was conceived on New Year's Eve?"

"Yes," she replied that she was almost certain of that.

I noticed, however, that one source was cited by most of the websites and news stations which were reporting October 5th as the most popular birthday. Those that didn't cite a specific source had specific language or numbers that were too similar to those cited by that same, singular source to be coincidental.

Furthermore, the data upon which that original source based its claim was unavailable. It would have been easy to cite the same source used by such news outlets as NBC4-TV out of Washington, D.C., and all the others, but one source without the backing evidence just doesn't pass my standard of reliability even though that was the storyline requested by the News Director. So I asked myself, who might have actual birth record data and statistics? The government, for one. So I did a search restricted to .gov  sites and came up with the CDC data contained in my report which was inconclusive but tended to cast further doubt on the October 5th meme.

Looking further, I found a 2006 study by a Harvard professor who listed all 366 days of the year (including leap year's February 29th) in order of popularity, based on a study of many years of birth records. His data was more in line with the CDC data and was quite different than the source used by almost every website that talked about the most popular birthday in the U.S. I could have, and should have, gone one step further and called the Harvard professor who did the study and asked to see his data for a solid answer to the question, but by this time, my deadline was fast approaching and it didn't seem possible to make the contact and review the details of the study in time to publish the story at all.

With three sources in hand, but without the raw data to confirm their findings, I cannot say definitively upon which date the most popular birthday falls. I can say, however, that the October 5th date is pretty doubtful, and that's the story I went with. You can read it in its entirety at Yahoo! News by clicking the link below.

• Is October 5th Really the most Popular Birthday in the United States?

Libel revisited

First, let me say for the record, that I am not a lawyer or legal expert, and this is not intended as legal advice, but as an example of and commentary on best (and worst) practices.

I wrote about jumping to conclusions when reporting about the actions of specific persons or companies. I said that you can report what someone else said about the person as long as you say that that person said it and don't do anything to validate the statement. I didn't mention, and I should have, an important exception to that rule. If you know or have reason to believe that the statement is false, but print it anyway without acknowledging that you know or suspect it to be false, then you can still be held responsible for any damage to a person's reputation (or business) resulting from the publication of those statements.

Here's a case where the NY Post is being sued for just such an action. In this case, the NY Post cited unnamed sources "close to the defense" who made very damaging statements about the woman who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault. The NY Post apparently accepted the word of people with every reason to lie in order to discredit the woman. If they did additional research to verify the claims, there was no  mention of that in their report.

Without any attempt to verify or qualify the statements, it could be argued that the NY Post is validating their credibility. In fact, as CNN points out in the linked story above, the NY Post article specifically said the woman was "doing double duty as a prostitute, collecting cash on the side from male guests, The Post has learned." That statement in particular shows that the NY Post believes the accusations and strongly implies that they have investigated to back them up. It adds validity to the allegations backed by the reputation of the NY Post.

Anyone can go out and find someone to make stuff up about someone else for the sake of getting a sensational headline. That doesn't absolve a reporter or a publisher of their responsiblity if there's good reason to doubt the veracity of the statements. In this case, the allegations made involved a number of third parties, who presumably could have been tracked down and questioned by the NY Post, but apparently weren't.

A paper can be wrong, but they need to show that they undertook reasonable precautions to make sure what they were printing was true. If you actually go a step farther and treat third party allegations as facts that you have verified, you'd better make very sure that you did verify them. Perhaps, the NY Post did that in this case and will be vindicated, who knows. Better reporting could have prevented the situation in the first place.

When to use your prior articles as primary source material

I've covered the difference between primary and secondary sources in previous posts and told you that you should always strive to use a primary source rather than someone else's reporting of that source material. Obviously, an original interview that you conduct is a primary source. Don't overlook that fact if you later write on a similar topic. You can cite the expert you interviewed with a link back to that interview as a primary source for future articles.

This is an exception to the rule. Ordinarily, I think linking back to one of your articles as a source of factual information for a news report is not a good idea if the information you're citing was originally drawn from another source. In other words, many articles (especially news articles) are themselves secondary or even tertiary sources.

If your previous article said, "The FBI, on their website, are asking for the public's aid in locating Whitey Bolger." That's a secondary source with the FBI website being the primary source. If you wrote "ABC News reported that the FBI Director asked for the public's help..." Your article becomes a tertiary source, ABC News is the secondary source for the primary source which was the FBI Director himself. These kinds of chain references where the reader who wishes to check your source has to go through several links to get to the source are damaging to the writer's credibility, in my opinion, and should be avoided.

However, articles in which you personally conducted the interview and are bearing witness to what the relevent source said to you, are fair primary source references. There is no extra link in the chain for the reader to chase down because you've done the original investigation and reporting and these articles can credibly be used as primary source references for future articles.

Note that this is for news source references. If you include links to other articles you've written as additional background material, further reading, related topics, or also of interest pieces, that's a separate thing altogether and I don't take issue with that at all.

Reporting on 'hints and allegations'

Ideally, every news reporter would adopt a Joe Friday approach, "All we know are the facts, ma'am." There's a place for commentary and opinion, but news reporting isn't that place. A well-written news article should present the facts and let the reader form their own opinions. Unfortunately, in my opinion, that doesn't happen much anymore.

Separating fact from opinion in news reports

There are certain instances where a writer must be especially careful about blurring facts and opinions, whether the opinions belong to her or to someone else. Generally, those instances involve cases where what is said could be damaging to someone's (or some company's) reputation. We can write about allegations, accusations, convictions and indictments as facts, but not the underlying actions unless we were personally witness to them and would be willing to testify to them under oath in a court of law. For example, "When I arrived on the scene, the fight was still in progress and Joe Smith was alternately shoving and being shoved by Sam Jones." I saw it, I would attest to it under oath, I can write it.
However, if, when I arrived, Joe and Sam were in handcuffs, all five people I asked said they saw the two shoving each other and described the altercation in detail, a police officer told me they were being arrested for disorderly conduct, public drunkenness and assault, and I heard Jones yell out, "Ness time I'll do more 'n jess shove you ta th' groun'," just before he vomitted onto the side of the police cruiser. I can not write a factual news article stating that Smith and Jones were shoving each other, that they were drunk, or anything about their specific actions (other than saying that Jones yelled out whatever I heard him yell).
I can write something like the following:

On Friday evening at approximately 11:45 p.m., the Rutland City Police arrested Joe Smith and Sam Jones outside of Notorious Nightclub on Main Street. The arresting officer, Detective Joe Friday, said the pair were being arrested for disorderly conduct, public drunkeness and assault.

Mike Jones, who said he was the brother of one of the accused, said "Sam wasn't doing nothing. Joe just walked up and hit him over the head with a beer bottle. Sam just turned around and pushed him away, you know, acting in self-defense." Four other bystanders, however, claimed to have seen Jones spit in Smith's face immediately prior to the altercation.

Bartenders could not say how many drinks were served to the pair prior to the trouble in the parking lot. Officers at the scene would not comment on the results of a breathalyzer test administered to Smith and Jones. 

John Baptiste, who was behind the bar at the time said that Jones had been asked to leave the premises on several previous occasions, but could not say why.

In this example, I am not reporting as fact anything I didn't see. Instead I am reporting that an officer told me this, four bystanders (whose names and phone numbers I jotted down for my file) told me that, and Mike Jones told me something else. In this case, I could testify that these people told me those things, but I can't say for certain whether any of what they said is actually true or not. I did not personally, in my article, accuse anyone of anything or make assumptions about anyne's guilt or innocence.

It would be entirely wrong to write: On Friday evening at approximately 11:45 p.m., Joe Smith and Sam Jones were carted away in handcuffs after brawling in the parking lot of Notorious Nightclub on Main Street. Jones, a known trouble-maker, started the fight by spitting in Smith's face. Smith retaliated by hitting the larger man in the head with a beer bottle, but was shoved to the ground and could have been in for much worse if police had not arrived to break up the fight. While the majority of onlookers provided consistent descriptions of the fight, Jones' brother Mike seemed to leave out key pieces of the story to protect his big brother. Both men were drunk when they left the club and even the bartenders lost track of how much alcohol the men had been served that evening. Notorious Nightclub lives up to its name as events like those of last night seem to happen on a regular basis there. Perhaps, if the hired help were trained well enough to recognize when someone has had enough to drink, they could keep their patrons out of jail.

In the latter example, I have personally accused two men, Smith and Jones, of specific criminal actions. I have make actionable statements against the management and staff of Notorious Nightclub, accused Mike Jones of lying, and personally accused Smith and Jones of being drunk. Both I and my publisher could be sued over each of these statements, since they are all based on hearsay or unsubstantiated assumptions and damaging to someone's reputation. I don't know if the two men were drunk, if Mike Jones was lying, or if the four other bystanders were cousins of Smith and were lying on his behalf. Any of them might have been mistaken. I have one bartender's assertion that Jones had been removed from Notorious on previous occasions, but have personally interpreted that by calling Jones a known trouble-maker, another potentially actionable allegation on my part. While I might be able to successfully defend against civil suits against some of these claims, if the results of the breathalyzer tests were admitted and showed the men over the legal limit, for example, my allegation of them being drunk might get dismissed, but some are indefensible - was Mike Jones lying or simply mistaken?

Let's assume several weeks go by. Jones died from a subdural hematoma the next day, Smith is going on trial for murder. I can say that Smith has been arraigned for murder, he is being tried for murder, he has been accused of murder by the prosecutor, but I cannot call him a murderer, or say that he killed Jones. I can say that the coroner stated that the autopsy revealed the cause of death was a blow to the head consistent with being struck by a beer bottle, as Smith was alleged to have done two days prior to the Jones' death.

If Smith is convicted of murder, I still cannot call him a murderer with absolute impunity. I can say he has been convicted of murder, found guilty of murder, or is serving a life sentence for murder, but if the conviction were overturned later, my calling him a murderer outright would be proven to be incorrect.

In short, a factual news article can report allegations or statements made by others who are cited in the text, but should never make claims, accusations, or assumptions about events to which the writer was not personally a witness.

Although personal allegations against individuals are the most common instances where this comes into play, it also applies in other areas. I can't say for sure, for example whether cell phones cause brain tumors or not. I can say that 17 independent studies have found no evidence that cell phones cause brain tumors or that Mike Jones, brother of Sam Jones who was  originally thought to have died of a subdural hematoma after being struck with a beer bottle, now claims that his brother's death was caused by a tumor triggered by his cellphone. "He never had no tumor before he got a cell phone," Jones shouted from the courthouse steps over the protests of his attorney.

The writer should let the reader know the source of every bit of information in the article that isn't widely known public knowledge. I don't need to provide a source for information like, "the President of the United States was born in Hawaii." If I wrote, however, "Hawaii remains the President's favorite vaction spot," I'd need to cite a source such as "he told Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Show last night."

Establishing credibility Part I

I remember when the evening television news anchor was the most trusted man in America. When Walter Cronkite said "...and that's the way it is," we knew that that was indeed, the way it is. It wasn't his opinion. It wasn't his spin, or his interpretation of the a situation. It was the News with a capital N and that meant facts, just the facts, and nothing but the facts.

Cronkite had that trust because he had developed a reputation and his credibility was beyond reproach. Honestly, that's the way I prefer my news. Give me the facts, and let me decide what I feel about the situation on my own. I don't need a triumvirate of morning show hosts to shake their heads and pass judgment on the news as if their opinion is more valid than that of anyone else.

Unfortunately, though, as Walter might have said that's the way it is these days. Commentary, opinion and facts are all ingredients in today's news recipe. Some recipes may call for more of one ingredient than the others. The net result, however, is that hardly any of us would volunteer the name of a modern day news anchor as the most trusted person in America these days.

As news writers, however, it is our jobs to present the news in a credible fashion. If the reader doesn't believe what we write, then we are wasting their time with our words. Simply saying something that's true doesn't always automatically translate into believability. As professional writers it is our jobs to choose words carefully. We can choose words for their emotional connotations, and that's fine, as long as we are also careful to use words and write with a credible voice, using solid logic applied to verifiable facts.

If I write that the most popular car color is red, I need to support and qualify that statement. Without that support it is not a credible statement and it detracts from any point I want to make in whatever I'm writing. After all, if I am caught in an error one time, the reader can only assume that the rest of my article is questionable as well.

To support the fact that the most popular car color is red, for example, There are several ways to go. I can remove my credibility from the equation altogether by attributing the statement to someone else. If I say "Joe Smith, the owner of Joe Smith's Fine Used Cars in Hoboken, New Jersey, told me that the most popular car color is red," then the reader can make a judgement about the validity of the information based upon their opinion of Joe Smith's credibility and his qualifications to make such as judgement.

Whatever the reader decides about Joe Smith, I, as the author, cannot be judged on the relative merit of that statement unless, in the rest of my article I assign it some credibility that differs from the reader's assumption. If I say "therefore, my recommendation for car companies to save money is to only make red cars because it is the most popular color," then I have added my reputation and credibility on top of Joe Smith's by personally validating his statement. Now again, my credibility is on the line with the reader.

Every fact or statement in a news piece either builds on the writer's credibility because it is explicitly sourced, or it relies on the credibility capital the writer has already built with the reader. A news writer's credibility balance sheet cannot go into negative territory or readers (and editors) will decide that your article has no real worth to them.