Keeping it Factual

Last week, our Online Journalism class was visited by a guest speaker from NewsTrust.net, Kaizar Campwala. He talked to us about the company and their goal, which is to provide a place where people can analyze and evaluate news.

After participating in a news hunt for articles about Obama's foreign policy in the first 100 days I began to think about the value of this site. The site itself is easy to navigate and use, which is extremely important in keeping users of all ages engaged.

The benefit of this site is the ability for users to contribute their thoughts and opinions about certain articles. In relation to the sites that I am monitoring, this is important because although the publications may be respected, it is crucial to note that journalists are often on deadline, they are human and sometimes mistakes are made.

Keeping in line with this, I decided to see how corrections are handled on the New York Times Website. I found the link to the "corrections" page at the bottom the the NY Times homepage. The corrections page listed seven corrections posted today (Feb. 21) paired with a link to the original article.

I imagine that more than seven mistakes were made throughout the print addition, yet these may have been the only ones brought to light. I don't find fault with publications that make mistakes. It is admirable to print the mistakes and move on. The idea that NewsTrust has doesn't take into account the corrections made by the publications; however, NewsTrust sparked my interest in this topic. It also caused me to evaluate the number of sources in articles, which I will discuss at a later date.