Time vs. quality — The Spiegel’s embarassing mistake
For the news media it is the same as for the whole financial industry: speed means money. The race for the latest and most spectacular news began a long time ago, already in the 17th century, and I would say every news organisation is a victim of this competition when it comes to (breaking) news. With the following statement of Spiegel Online, I discovered on Facebook today, we can be certain that the Spiegel is one of these victims:
The Spiegel had to admit that it had published wrong news when they wrote about the Federal Constitutional Court’s verdict to prohibit the radical right-wing party NPD. Actually, the judges decided that the NPD was a legal party which did not have to be banned due to its inability to seriously harm Germany’s democracy.
Okay Spiegel, I am sorry that I have to twist the knife in the wound, but for me it is a perfect example to talk about how the race for the latest news destroys the reliability of news media. I do not want to show what a bad news organisation the Spiegel is or that it was a typical mistake of it. Actually, any news organisation could have made the same mistake, so I think we should focus on this aspect as a general news media problem. In my opinion, the most interesting part of the Spiegel’s explanation how the mistake could have happened is the passage where the editors describe the news about the judges’ verdict as breaking news. At this point the Spiegels’ editors themselves confess that speed and time pressure have priority over quality. As already mentioned, the Spiegel has not invented this concept; it is not the first and definitely not the last news organisation to accidentally publish wrong information. Of course, this is a sad fact and we would all profit from news media which rather focused on reliability instead of money.
On the other hand, one must say that this case was not a typical breaking news event. When it comes to breaking news unpredictability plays an important role. The journalists are confronted with a spontaneous situation they cannot prepare for. In contrast, the delivery of the judgment concerning the NPD was not something that happened suddenly. There was a firm date and every news organisation could prepare for reporting about it. Nevertheless, the time pressure of being the first to report about the final judgment seems to have made the Spiegel’s journalists become too impatient and obviously ignore the crucial importance to listen to a verdict carefully in order to not confuse the actual sentence with a quote.
However, we must not forget that journalists are only humans and that all of us make mistakes. In this context I want to emphasise the editors’ commendable reaction to the mistake. They confessed it reputably and immediately corrected it. I said that breaking news unfortunately could be wrong fairly often, but you rarely see such a rueful behavior of a news organisation afterwards. Well done, Spiegel! In addition, it is also important to mention the editors’ intention to learn from it, which is very laudable and wise. Yet, the Spiegel is still part of the financial industry and as such will probably continue to play by its rules in order make profit. I do not contest the Spiegel’s willingness to keep their promise, but unfortunately I am not sure if it is really going to succeed.
