Breaking news coverage standards
Standards for digital breaking news coverage
Steve Buttry, American Press Institute and Gazette Communications
(319)398-5815, steve.buttry@gazcomm.com
Nebraska Press Association, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Nov. 6, 2009
Upholding and Updating Ethical Standards, a seminar underwritten by the Ethics and
Excellence in Journalism Foundation
Accuracy, verification, attribution and deadlines
Discuss – off deadline – your newsroom’s standards on breaking news. You want to get the
news online as quickly as possible, but in the opening minutes or hours of covering a breaking
story, you are still sorting fact from rumor. You know something happened, but you’re not sure
yet what. Some guidelines that might help:
• Standards for completeness change with digital editions, but not standards for accuracy.
The first bulletins alerting readers to breaking news aren’t full stories and online readers
understand that. Tell just what you know and be sure not to speculate or assume. An
accurate story is more important than a complete one.
• Attribute everything you didn’t see first-hand, especially in the early hours of a story.
Don’t say “12 miners were rescued miraculously.” Say, “family members say state
officials told them 12 miners had been rescued.” And say that you’re seeking verification.
• Acknowledge what you don’t know, such as that company officials have not yet
confirmed the rescue. Tell readers when you are seeking verification or when you’re
receiving conflicting reports.
• Seek verification and get the verification online as quickly as possible to bolster the
initial bulletin.
• You can update at any time. A brief story or even a one-sentence bulletin will suffice
when that is all you know. Brief and frequent updates of breaking news, publishing facts
only as you verify them, help drive traffic in addition to protecting credibility.
• As soon as you learn that something you have posted online is inaccurate, fix it. And note
that you are correcting inaccurate information posted earlier. Readers checking your web
site frequently will notice the conflicting accounts. You hurt your credibility more by
publishing unexplained inconsistent information than by acknowledging mistakes.
• If you’re liveblogging an event and then post a writethru to the web after you’ve written
the print story, someone should read both the liveblog and the writethru to check for and
correct inconsistencies.
• Discuss your standards for reporting, if at all, about calls you hear over a police scanner.
Is it acceptable to report that dispatchers have sent emergency crews to a particular site
for a particular purpose? Or do you wait till you have a reporter on the site? Or do you
seek confirmation by phone while a reporter is en route?
• Using care, ask users to tell you what they know about breaking news stories. Don’t say,
“We’ve heard that shots were fired at the high school. Do you know anything about
that?” Instead say: “If you know what’s going on at the high school, please call (your
phone number).”
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Nebraska Press Association, Nov. 6, 2009
Editing provides a valuable backstop
Online coverage of breaking news presents lots of trade-offs: If reporters can post directly to the
web, you can cover events in real time. Yet you lose the benefit of editing not only to improve
grammar and the smoothness of copy but sometimes to uphold standards on issues of taste,
accuracy, privacy or fairness. This is not a case where one answer fits all situations. Some
reporters need more editing than others. Some situations demand more caution. Consider at least
these factors as you decide the appropriate level of editing:
• Type of story. If you are writing about crimes or other issues that might damage
someone’s reputation, you might need more editing than a weather story or a sports game
story.
• Reporter. Newsrooms need aggressive reporters who are willing to take chances. But
those reporters need good editors to backstop their judgment. Editors may decide that one
reporter has exercised consistently good judgment and can post directly to the web, while
another needs editing or at least consultation first.
Consider the full range of possibilities. If you decide that reporters should post directly to the
web for some types of stories, you can have editors read back behind them, so that any errors or
questionable judgments are addressed quickly. You can authorize reporters to post directly to the
web, with instructions to confer with editors before posting anything that would raise issues of
taste, privacy or fairness. You can invite readers to alert you to errors they spot. You can decide
that the editor and reporter should discuss a story as it is unfolding and then decide whether
editing is needed. You can authorize the reporter to post routine news or developments directly
to the web but either confer with editors or send copy to editors in any borderline cases.
Live coverage
Liveblogs using CoverItLive and live webcams are effective ways of covering breaking news.
But both can leave you vulnerable to mischief. You can feed a Twitter hashtag into the liveblog
and collect tweets from across the region about severe weather, for instance. But someone needs
to monitor the liveblog, so you can quickly remove tweets that are vulgar, libelous, spam or
attempts at free advertising (most times this won’t happen, but don’t launch a live chat if you’re
not going to monitor it). Similarly, a webcam can invite some people to perform or parade signs
in front of it. If you are monitoring, you can turn it off until they go away.
Fairness
Does the rush to get news online right away change your responsibility to present fair content
and to give people a chance to respond to charges or criticism? Does fairness come over time,
rather than in each story? For instance, is it OK to rush a partial story online, making a charge or
criticism, with the presumption that the response will get lead position in a later story or update,
balancing your coverage over time? How do you ensure that this really happens? What if the
response comes at a time when other developments in the story are breaking and it doesn’t get as
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Nebraska Press Association, Nov. 6, 2009
prominent play as the original accusation? Are some situations so serious that you need to apply
your standard of fairness from the first bulletin?
An approach that recognizes urgency and fairness would be to present a charge, allegation or
criticism when it breaks and report at the time that you will be seeking comment from the person
in question. Then, when you get the response, that should receive similar prominence on your
web site. For instance, if the charge was promoted as “breaking news” or led a “latest news”
listing, the response should be featured the same way. (A no-comment response should be noted,
but doesn’t have to receive similar play.)
Crowdsourcing
Interactive media give you a chance to improve the accuracy of breaking news coverage by
seeking verification, documentation and detail from the public. They also present dangers of
mixing rumor, speculation, exaggeration, unsubstantiated attacks and unsupported boasts with
your serious journalism, which could undermine your credibility.
When you are seeking eyewitness accounts of a story or photos or videos from the public,
consider whether you want to invite the public to post directly to the web or email their
contributions to you for your consideration. Some questions to consider in deciding this: Might
the contributions from the public invade someone’s privacy? Might the contributions from the
public degenerate into arguments or insults about a controversial issue? Even if you value the
arguments as healthy public conversation, this might not be the place where you want people
with personal experience in the issue or story that is breaking.
Consider the immediate impact
The immediacy of online coverage of breaking news requires some consideration of the impact
of your coverage beyond what you consider for the delayed coverage of print. You may get
identities of victims or hostages before their families have been notified. Try to learn whether
family members have been notified and consider whether you should wait until they have been to
release names. If you are writing during a military operation, police manhunt or hostage
situation, consider whether enemy troops, fugitives or hostage-takers may read your coverage as
the event is unfolding and whether your coverage might influence the event in some way. Amber
alerts or other news about missing young people can present a dilemma when you publish the
alert, with the name and photo of the missing child, then learn hours later that the child has been
recovered and was sexually abused. Discuss how some of these concerns might shape your
coverage in all stories, in special cases or in specific stories.
Evaluate how you’re doing
Discuss how you did after each major breaking news story that you cover (and probably after
some lesser breaking stories). If you rushed to get some news online and some things turned out
to be wrong, discuss whether you need to be more demanding of verification or whether you
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need more editing. If you got beaten on a story, discuss whether you were too cautious and can
be more aggressive the next time and still be sure to get it right.
Consider explaining your decisions
As you write and report in different ways, consider explaining to your audience in editor’s notes,
an editor’s blog and/or an editor’s column what you are doing and why. If you just covered a big
story and you did pretty well, explain what you’re doing differently and how you managed to
uphold standards as you changed. If you made some mistakes, admit and explain them to readers
and explain how you plan to do better in the future. Transparency is helpful as you deal with
unfamiliar territory.
Click here for the handout. Breaking news coverage standards
