Sunday, December 20, 2009

Regret the error

I am fond of warning clients that we're entering a new era - you can't lie! If you do, you will be caught - if not now then later.

I argue that rather than "spinning" an issue, just tell the truth. Getting the true story out in your own words is always better than admitting it after someone else calls you out.

That's one of the reasons I like this time of year when people start compiling their year-end lists of things. One of my favourites is Regret the Error which tracks the media's screw-ups over the past year.

See which ones you remember and think about how things could have been handled differently.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2 comments:

Tom King said...

Fox wasn't the only news agency to play Old Harry with the facts this year. There were far more egregious factual errors and just plain made up stuff. You forgot one of the most controversial "called errors" of the year that resulted in an English Lord winning a lawsuit that forced British schools to issue a disclaimer before teaching Al Gore's book "An Inconvenient Truth" because of significant factual errors. Further revelations in the wake of "Climategate" have led to calls by Academy members to revoke his Oscar.
Now, that's a pretty big story you'd think, but we haven't seen a lot of corrective media on that one for some reason.
Wonder why?

Tom

Dave said...

I don't know Tom. I've seen a lot of media about those issues but I don't think that you can call them errors of fact. There's a lot of debate about that, certainly. I'd say the stuff around "Climategate" has gotten plenty of press.