A wise newspaper publisher was once approached by a reader who noted a correction on Page 2 of his edition. The reader said something akin to, “Your reporting is inaccurate. Look, you had a mistake in the paper. You had it wrong.”
The publisher said, “No, sir. We are a credible news source because of the correction.”
The reason for that is simple – a real news source provides accurate information. If a mistake is made, we correct it, because we deal in the truth.
In some cases, only a clarification is needed. In others, finding another side to the story is crucial.
We recently had a story about a young Clarkesville girl who participates in pageants. There was one word missing from the title the young girl won – noting that she won for North Georgia, not the entire state – and we issued a clarification, in print and online.
The girl will still represent her state in the next round of pageants, but another child’s parent wanted to see the record clarified to reflect her own child’s accomplishment.
This week, a social media post claimed The Northeast Georgian posted an article that was “overdramatized and very inaccurate” about an incident on Easter Sunday with a man getting tasered and arrested in a church parking lot at 1 p.m.
The information in that report came from an official source – the sheriff’s incident report. That does not mean every arrest report is infallible by any means, but it came from the official source. The report said this is how the sheriff’s office said the incident went down.
After being put on blast on social media, we were later approached by the pastor of that church, who had a different perspective of what happened. Presenting that side of the story is just as important as the law enforcement side.
In many cases, folks do not want to share their story, especially when it relates to a possible crime being committed. Those suspected of the crimes do not want to hurt their chances in court, and those witnessing them sometimes just do not want to get involved.
Sometimes folks are absolved or acquitted after an arrest runs in the paper, and we welcome anyone to bring their court documents in to have a story run about being found not guilty.
We applaud Pastor John Graham for bringing additional context to the Easter Sunday incident, as not everything is exactly as a source tells you, or even how a story is interpreted by the reader. But, again, the report came straight from the horse’s mouth, as did Pastor Graham’s added perspective.
We will always strive for the truth. It’s our duty.