It’s about trust. Our relationship with our readers is built on transparency, honesty and integrity. As such, we have launched a trust initiative to tell you who we are and how and why we do what we do.
I’ve been at this job for over 15 years. While I’m certainly more experienced now than when I started, I still make plenty of mistakes.
A particularly bad one recently was the result of what was aptly described as a not-so-funny comedy of errors. The end result was that a letter to the editor from Dawn Claxton commenting on the murder trial regarding Jonathan Styres’ death was mistakenly cited as being in response to Coun. Deborah Styres-Hill’s obituary (she was his mom); in fact, her letter was responding to another letter, which had run a few weeks prior.
This created a different context for Dawn’s words than what she had intended.
I and my fellow journalists know that when we’re quoting someone, we must not only make sure we report what they said accurately, but also maintain the relevant context — how they said it, when, where, in response to what and so on.
The Sachem and other Torstar newsrooms are guided by a set of journalistic standards, which state that “accuracy is our most basic contract with readers and is the responsibility of everyone in our newsrooms.”
As journalists, we always strive for accuracy. As humans, we sometimes stumble.
When that does happen and we do make a mistake — even if it’s an honest one — it’s vital that we own it, as uncomfortable as it can be.
So, when Dawn reached out to alert me about the attribution error, the Sachem’s newsroom promptly took action.
Her letter, published online, was updated with the correct response attribution and a correction notice was published on the web. A correction also went into the July 20 paper, the next print edition to come out after the mistake was flagged.
It’s important that we tell our readers when we’ve fallen short.
“Corrections serve the reader and they serve the public record. They are essential to building and maintaining trust with our readers,” read the standards that guide our work. “We make clear to readers the corrected information.”
We do this in the name of trust and transparency.
Our readers’ trust is important to us, as is our journalistic integrity; holding ourselves to a high standard of account is how we are justified in holding others in power to account, too.
If you see an error in these pages, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me (tbotting@sachem.ca) or to regional managing editor Cheryl Stepan (cstepan@thespec.com).
If it turns out we made a mistake, we’ll own it. It’s the responsible thing to do.
