![]() Is it acceptable to report that dispatchers have sent emergency crews to a particular site for a particular purpose? Or do you wait till you have a reporter on the site? Discuss your standards for reporting, if at all, about calls you hear over a police scanner.If you're liveblogging an event and then post a writethru to the web after you've written the print story, someone should read both the liveblog and the writethru to check for and correct inconsistencies.You hurt your credibility more by publishing unexplained inconsistent information than by acknowledging mistakes. Readers checking your web site frequently will notice the conflicting accounts. And note that you are correcting inaccurate information posted earlier. As soon as you learn that something you have posted online is inaccurate, fix it.Brief and frequent updates of breaking news, publishing facts only as you verify them, help drive traffic in addition to protecting credibility. A brief story or even a one-sentence bulletin will suffice when that is all you know. Seek verification and get the verification online as quickly as possible to bolster the initial bulletin.Tell readers when you area seeking verification or when you're receiving conflicting reports. Acknowledge what you don't know, such as that company officials have not yet confirmed the rescue. ![]() ![]() ![]() Don't say “12 miners were rescued miraculously.” Say, “family members say state officials told them 12 miners had been rescued.” And say that you're seeking verification. Attribute everything you didn't see first-hand, especially in the early hours of a story.An accurate story is more important than a complete one. Tell just what you know and be sure not to speculate or assume. The first bulletins alerting readers to breaking news aren't full stories and online readers understand that. Standards for completeness change with digital editions, but not standards for accuracy.You know something happened, but you're not sure yet what. You want to get the news online as quickly as possible, but in the opening minutes or hours of covering a breaking story, you are still sorting fact from rumor. All you do is click a link for the city of your choice and start listening.Cedar Rapids Gazette, Standards for digital breaking news coverageĪccuracy, verification, attribution and deadlinesĭiscuss - off deadline - your newsroom's standards on breaking news. There are also fire department radio feeds as well. There are hundreds of live police radio feeds being streamed over the Internet. Nowadays, you don’t even need a police scanner to hear police calls in many cities. Newspaper, radio and TV reporters listen to them in order to get the first word of a major crime or accident so they can get to the scene quickly. Police scanners are not just for professional worriers, though. When my brother became a policeman, my mother really had something to worry about–and an excuse to listen to the police radio day in and day out. Naturally, she had been worrying about where I was and listening to hear if there had been any wrecks. I remember coming in late at night from a date to find her sitting at the kitchen table with the scanner going. When the first police scanners came out, my mother bought one so she could hear what was happening in her city, and especially to hear if anything bad was being reported in her own neighborhood.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |