Part of being professional is being responsible and willing to be held accountable for things that go wrong.
With all of the facts, names, dates, numbers and quotes that end up in a daily newspaper, there's an unusually high chance of something going wrong: someone's name being spelled wrong, a wrong time for an event, etc.
That's where fact checking comes in. Reporters, copy editors and editors are responsible for getting the facts right. That is, of course, the idea of a newspaper - accuracy.
Last week, The State News ran a photo which had been taken by a photographer at The Tribune in San Luis Obispo, Calif. The Associated Press picked up the photo, which is how The State News obtained it.
The photo of an overly jubilant Michael Jackson fan ran with an article announcing the end of the Jackson trial. The man was identified as Jake Byrd in the photo's caption.
It turns out that Jake Byrd is really Tony Barbieri, a writer and actor on the late-night talk show, "Jimmy Kimmel Live." Barbieri had portrayed Byrd during a number of segments on the TV show, depicting him as an obsessed Jackson fan.
Now, there's no crime in not watching "Jimmy Kimmel Live" enough to know that Jake Byrd is really just a made-up character.
But there's something wrong when the simple act of fact checking becomes too arduous to complete, resulting in a printed error.
This entire issue could have been resolved by the simple act of "Googling" Jake Byrd's name. Such an Internet search reveals one Jake Byrd as being associated with "Jimmy Kimmel Live." Barbieri even duped The New York Times last year as Byrd.
A few State News editors had originally planned to run another photo but changed their minds at the last minute in favor of the Associated Press' enthusiastic subject.
The photo's caption was then not properly edited in the rush. It was an error that should have been caught. After a reader brought the issue to our attention, we immediately broke the news to The Associated Press of its own error.
The mistake took down our credibility a notch, and we care a great deal about our credibility, as do our readers. But it's a learning experience. These kinds of mistakes should not be made, especially not more than once. This incident has opened our eyes to the truth that even the most mundane fact checking has the power to control two of the most important facets of a newspaper - credibility and accuracy.
