Inaccurate Articles Hurt

On July 8, Charles McGrath published an article in the New York Times about a popular video on YouTube starring Matt Harding dancing in 69 different locations around the world. You may have seen it yourself as it has had more than 7 million hits since it was added on June 20.

The article was nice. It was informational, timely and had a human interest point to it. But, it had errors. According to Harding in his blog posted July 8, McGrath misspelled the composer's name, provided an incorrect date on the second video Harding created and incorrectly described a scene in the video as a geyser when it was really a waterfall. McGrath described Harding as "doughy", which after watching the video I'd say is not an accurate description of his physique. From Harding's blog, it looks like the desciption hurt some feelings, too.

Even these small errors can harm a newspaper's reputation if it happens too often. Worse yet, before the internet, readers may not have caught these errors. But with the popularity of blogs and internet journalism, these errors are brought to the public's attention quickly.

This is a good example of the importance of fact checking and choosing words carefully for an article. McGrath's story isn't on a subject that one would consider of grave importance to the world, but it does show that journalists (or their editors) still need to do diligence with ensuring they are publishing an accurate high quality story.