Journalism is about far more than simply gathering information and passing it on. An essential part of the editorial process is to examine everything we are told to make sure it is factual, and then add context so that any facts that are uncovered are considered alongside existing knowledge.

The author skyfishgoo wrote in a piece about critical thinking that “science and journalism both seek to put facts in context so they become useful to others”. He goes on to say that “science dictates that when a claim is made it is subject to critical review”.

Giving content “a bit of a scrub”

Put simply, he says that all of us have a responsibility to give every new piece of information that comes our way “a bit of a scrub” before passing it on to others.

This is particularly important in terms of producing original journalism and then broadcasting or publishing that material and sharing it on social media.

Once a piece of journalism is in the public domain it will be referenced, quoted, and possibly plagiarised as it becomes part of the global conversation. If that piece of journalism is untrue, then lasting damage will have been done.

But let’s first agree what is meant by the word ‘fact’.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a fact is something that is “known or proved to be true”. It is also “information used as evidence or as part of a report or news article”. In legal terms, a fact is “the truth about events as opposed to interpretation”.

And that last definition is interesting, because journalists ‘interpret’ events by adding context – but more on that later. For now, let’s refer to facts that have not yet been fully tested as ‘claims’.

Here are a few tests that should be applied to information that a journalist receives from someone who ‘claims’ that what they are passing on is factual.

The first three tests are about source verification and fact-checking, the fourth is about adding context.

1: Is the source credible?

• What do we know about the source?
• What is their motive for sharing the information?
• Could the source have an agenda about which we are not aware?

To Do: Research the background of the source, their connections, any previous record of sharing information.

2: Has it happened?

• Could there be a simple explanation?
• Has your source been misled? If so, by whom?
• Is there a history of such an event taking place?

To Do: Research the chronology of events. Check your own news organisations archive. Search the web.

3: Where is the evidence?

• Is the information available elsewhere?
• What is the evidence to support the claim?
• Has that evidence been tested?

To Do: Seek out a second, independent and trusted source.

4: What is the context?

• What are the implications if the claims are true?
• How many people are affected and how?
• Gather data and statistics for comparison purposes.

To Do: Paint the bigger picture, understand the importance of the event in relation to other news stories.

Those of you who are new to journalism might want to print out the following checklist and put it on the wall in your newsroom as a reminder.

If the results of your research make you feel uneasy you might want to drop the story. However, even a false claim, presented as fact, but, on investigation, found to be untrue, could still be a story. It could point to a political, commercial, or social conflict that might require investigation.

Never rule out a possible news story because the initial evidence presented proves to be shaky.

Now let’s look at point four ‘the context’ more closely.

Adding context

One dictionary definition of ‘context’ is: “the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood.”

That word, ‘understood’, is important.

The role of a journalist is to enhance understanding. We do that by surrounding proven facts with data, statistics, history, and circumstances that, together, help paint a fuller picture of what has happened.

Think of it this way.

Imagine you are at home watching a series on TV. It’s the final episode of six. Just as the programme is reaching the conclusion there is a knock at the door. It’s a friend you haven’t seen for some time. You welcome them in.

As they walk through the door there is a scream from the lounge. One of the characters in the TV series has discovered the gruesome remains of a body. Your guest is shocked, but fascinated.

You offer to turn the TV off so you can chat, but they are so intrigued by what they saw on the screen that they ask you whether they could watch the programme with you, particularly as it’s reaching its conclusion. They want to know what happens next.

So you pause the programme, put the kettle on, make a cup of tea, and tell your guest about what has happened so far.

You explain who the characters are, what has taken place in previous episodes, how the situation has developed, the relationships between the characters, what clues you have picked up along the way, and how the plot has thickened to reach the point where your guest heard the scream.

And explaining the background proves to be important because your friend thought you must be watching a murder mystery, when, in fact, the series you were watching was a documentary about archeology. The scream was from an archeologist who had unexpectedly found mummified remains. It was not a modern-day crime thriller.

Now your guest has the context, so you can watch the end of the final episode together, with your guest informed about the background to the story and better able to understand events.

The same is true with journalism.

A colleague who was working as an intake editor on a news desk remembers receiving a call from an off-duty reporter who had just passed an overturned red double decker bus on  a London street. People were wandering around with blood pouring from wounds. Two camera crews were mobilised, but before they’d even left the building the reporter discovered that it was a film crew making a movie. The story had changed once the reporter had checked his facts and explored the context.

I made a similar mistake when reporting on a fire at an inner city block of flats in Liverpool. I reported live into the 4pm news bulletin saying that residents were trying to salvage what they could from their burning homes. I was wrong. Had I checked my facts, not made assumptions, and taken time to establish the context of events I would have discovered that I was witnessing rioting and looting. You can read about that experience and the lessons learnt here.

The challenge all journalists face is not just to report the news but to also set out the background to an event as well as all related events in order to help the audience understand the elements of a story which they might otherwise find hard to comprehend – or even reach the wrong conclusion.

Perhaps it involves researching and setting out the chronology of events that have led to the current breaking news story. These can be presented as related stories.

You might need to research the backgrounds of the characters involved as you look for any social connections to anyone else involved. These can be presented as profiles.

Essentially, what you are doing is gathering as much information as possible in order to put together the most detailed, in-depth, and informative account of what has happened.

All this illustrates that journalism helps people make sense of the world – not just what’s happening, but why it’s happening. Stories that raise questions without even attempting to address those questions are weak stories.

• A bridge has collapsed. Why?
• A racing driver stops his car while leading the race. Why?
• A politician resigns. Why?

A news story without context can never be completely understood. A news source that is not verified can never be completely trusted. A claim, left unchecked, might not necessarily be a fact. And a news story without fact-checking and context could add more to the cacophony of confusion than to the enhancement of understanding.

If you found this interesting and, perhaps, helpful, you might want to check our other, related training modules.

Accuracy in journalism
The basics of fact-checking
How to identify and deal with fake news
Dealing with disinformation and misinformation
Unconscious bias and its impact on journalism

The post Fact-checking and adding context first appeared on Media Helping Media.

The function of punctuation

Chapter 4 from the book ‘A journalist’s guide to the use of English’

PUNCTUATION is designed to make reading easy. It is the written counterpart of those pauses and verbal inflections which make speech understandable. It also serves to separate sentences, phrases and words into orderly elements. Without correct punctuation written language becomes garbled.

The most important marks of punctuation are: The comma, the semi-colon, the colon and the full stop.

The comma

THIS marks short pauses. It is the most frequently used punctuation mark and also the most misused.

The comma is used:

1. In the place of and to separate a series of words of the same kind.

E.g. The reporter should always write clear, concise, accurate English.

(The words separated by commas are all adjectives defining English.)

The same rule applies to series of other words, provided they belong to the same part of speech.

E.g. She said the same to James, Michael, John and Alexander.

(The separations here are all between proper nouns in a series.)

2. Before and after :

(i) Words or phrases such as: however, for instance, in fact.

(ii) Alternatives.

E.g. His writing was more refined, more intellectual, than Smith’s.

3. To mark off:

(i) words in the vocative. E.g. John, don’t go yet.

(ii) words or phrases in apposition (i.e. a statement in parentheses). E.g. Elizabeth II, Queen of England, has four children.

(iii) Participial phrases.

E.g. Being unaware of the situation, he blundered on.

(iv) Absolute phrases. E.g. That being so, we shall go by train.

4. In double sentences:

(i) Where there are two subjects. E.g. He wanted to leave, but his friend detained him. He felt ill, and his friend had to help him.

(ii) Where there is only one subject, but two verbs, the inclusion of the comma is necessary to make the sentence easier to read. E.g. I visited Thomas and Perks and Marks and Spencers, and later went home.

5. In complex sentences to separate:

(i) qualifying phrases. E.g. In spite of your attempt at secrecy, I know what happened.

(ii) subordinate, non-defining clauses. E.g. The reporters, who were called in on their day off, worked quickly. BUT NOT in defining clauses. E.g. The house that Jack built.

The semi-colon

THE semi-colon marks a longer pause than that indicated by the comma, and it is used:

1. In double sentences, where there is no conjunction;

E.g. The rumour was that the king was dead; the people believed it.

2. In the same kind of sentence where the conjunction is expressed, but where the writer intends the reader to note a longer pause between statements than a comma would signify.

E.g. There will be an inquest, of course; but the matter will not end there.

3. To divide several parallel clauses.

E.g. The ship sank within minutes; all hands and passengers were lost; no wreckage was sighted.

The colon

THE difference between the semi-colon and the colon is that the latter is used when the writer wishes to indicate an even longer pause than that indicated by the semi-colon. It is used:

1. Always before opening quotes. E.g. The Mayor said: “I am glad to be here.”

2. Before listing articles, or people or ideas. E.g. He sold the lot: boat, tackle, mooring rights and fishing licences.

E.g. They rejected his views on all subjects: sex, love, literature, marriage, violence.

E.g. All of them were dead : Bill, Jack, Ted and Willie.

3. To distinguish between two co-ordinate clauses, where the second explains the first. E.g. Keep your language uncluttered: it reads more easily.

4. In a double sentence where the two ideas are in antithesis. E.g. Man proposes: God disposes.

The full stop

THE full stop denotes the end of a sentence. It is also used after initials and abbreviations, but check your HOUSE STYLE for newspaper practice varies.

Other marks

1. The exclamation mark.

Use this only when it forms part of a title (of a film, etc.) or after an exclamation.
E.g. A beard, you say!

2. The question mark.

This should be used after a direct query. E.g. He asked: “Are you coming?”

(Note the question mark is inside the quotation marks because the whole question is quoted.)

If the question is not part of the quotation it comes outside the quotation.

E.g. Have you read “Pilgrim’s Progress”?

3. Quotation marks (inverted commas).

Use these for titles of books, plays, etc., only where this is consistent with House Style.

Use these also for direct quotes. E.g. He asked: “Are you coming?”

Where a quote comes within a quote use single commas inside. E.g. He asked: “Have you read ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’?”

4. The parenthesis.

This can take the form of: (i) Brackets. E.g. If we believe (as we should) that syntax is important, we should master it.

(ii) The long dash. E.g. If we believe—as we should—that syntax is important, we should master it.

The long dash is to be preferred because it keeps the sentence more fluent.

5. The hyphen.

The hyphen, or short dash, is used:

(i) For compound nouns. E.g. mother-in-law.

(ii) For compound titles. E.g. Adjutant-general.

(iii) For compound nouns which are made up of verbs and prepositions. E.g. call-up, get-together.

(iv) To link a suffix with a proper noun. E.g. pre-Christian.

(v) For compound adjectives. E.g. a black-bearded beggar (the beggar has a black beard). NOT a black bearded beggar (this means the black beggar has a beard).

(vi) To link numbers. E.g. Ninety-nine.

(vii) To distinguish between meanings. E.g. Re-cover (cover again); recover (regain).

(viii) To avoid clumsy juxtapositions of vowels or consonants. E.g. co-operation, snail-like.

(ix) Where the word looks odd without the hyphen. E.g. NOT rerun BUT re-run.

6. The apostrophe.

This has two uses:

(i) To denote a missing letter (or letters). E.g. don’t, can’t fo’c’s’le.

(ii) As a mark to denote the genitive or possessive case. E.g. Jacob’s ladder.

Possessives

Rules:

1. Before the S if it is singular; after the S if it is plural (E.g. boy’s and boys’).

2. Where the plural changes the ending of the word and thus has no S, the apostrophe goes before the S which is added (E.g. man’s, men’s).

Following this rule can produce some clumsy possessives, but this is unavoidable.

You cannot write: Strauss’ waltzes. It must be: Strauss’s waltzes.

However, if two men named Strauss are involved, you don’t write:

Strauss’s waltzes or Strausss’ waltzes; you simplify it to Strauss’ waltzes, because the plural of Strauss is Strauss.

3. Avoid double apostrophes:

The Inkmakers’ Society’s conference (write: The conference of the Inkmakers’ Society).

4. Avoid clumsy possessives:

The Vicar of Downtown, the Rev Owen Brown’s book (again invert it: The book by the Rev Owen Brown, Vicar of Downtown).

5. Avoid confusion with quotation marks, particularly single quotes.

You cannot write: In ‘The Times’s’ opinion.

It should be; In the opinion of ‘The Times’.

N.B. Possessive of WHO is WHOSE not WHO’S. Possessive of IT is ITS not IT’S.

Revised by John Bottomley 2020

About this training module

Ted Bottomley and Anthony Loftus were both journalists and training managers at the Express & Star group of newspapers in the UK. The group has given this site permission to publish the module (above), which is one of six taken from the book ‘A journalist’s guide to the use of English’, first published in July 1971 but still relevant today. You can find links to all six chapters below.

Ted Bottomley spent his whole working life in newspapers and more than 25 years in journalism. He was a former weekly newspaper editor, and had a long association with the National Council for the Training of Journalists. He was a member of the Publishing and Editorial Training Committee of the Printing & Publishing Industry Training Board. In the UK journalists still compete to try to win the prestigious ‘Ted Bottomley Award’.

Anthony Loftus was a high court reporter and film and music critic before becoming the Editorial Training Officer of the Express & Star group. He was a member of the Institution of Training Officers and the Association of Lecturers in Journalism, and the chair of the West Midlands Regional Training Committee of the National Council for the Training of Journalists.

You can read more about the book, the men behind it, and how it has been revised and updated by Ted Bottomley’s son, John, a newspaper journalist for 40 years.

The six chapters of ‘A journalist’s guide to the use of English’

• Chapter 1: The use of English
• Chapter 2: The essence of style
• Chapter 3: Word Power
• Chapter 4: Spelling
• Chapter 5: Syntax and sentence construction
• Chapter 6: Punctuation

The post Punctuation first appeared on Media Helping Media.

10 suggestions for journalistic success

Hard work and self-discipline are at the heart of good journalism.

Journalists should be accurate, first with news, trusted, easy to understand, straight, aware, disciplined and realistic.

They should always be contactable, and totally committed to finding original stories and telling them in a way that makes sense to the audience.

Here are a few tips from a lifetime of trying to get it right.

1: Be right

You are offering your journalism as a thing to be trusted. You have to build up trust with your readers, listeners and viewers. They want to know that they can rely on you to be accurate. Accuracy is the most important quality – even more than timeliness. Better to be second and right than first and wrong. But better still to be first and right.

2: Be first

Journalism is, by definition, timely. The best way to be timely is to be first. What’s the point of telling people things they already know? You are there to tell them things they don’t know. So chase that news and get it first.

3: Stick to what you know

It’s vital to stick to the facts that you know. Often you need more facts than you’ve so far gathered in order to tell a story properly. Instead, you may have only an incomplete picture. It’s unsatisfactory and frustrating. But don’t be tempted to speculate or – even worse – imply things you’re not sure about. Get the story out there in terms that you know to be true. You can develop it later.

4: Keep it simple

Journalism is not art. It’s important to present the story in an interesting way – but don’t waste time trying to fashion fancy sentences. Use simple language that tells the story as clearly and unambiguously as possible. Keep the sentences short. Be logical in the way you order the facts. Don’t impose on your viewers or readers or listeners. Make it easy for them to digest the information.

5: Play it straight

Journalism is a competitive business. Sometimes you’ll be tempted to cut corners. Don’t do it. Your trustworthiness is your main asset. Keep the journalism scrupulously accurate and your personal conduct ethical. Don’t do the dirty on your competitors – even if they do it to you. Always maintain your standards.

6: Know your market

Journalism is always aimed at someone. Who makes up your target audience? How old are they? Where do they live? Where do they work? What are their lives like? What interests them? What are they worried about? What do they want to know? What information do they need to take a full part in society? Remember you’re there to serve them – not to impress your peer group.

7: Be aware of the competition

Competition is what keeps us on our toes. With a bit of luck it will keep us honest. Always watch what the competition is doing. Judge yourself against its output. Try all the time to be better – get your stories faster, tell them better, find more interesting angles. Be willing to learn from the competition when it does a better job.

8: Be disciplined

There are all kinds of deadlines. With breaking news, the deadline is now: you’ve got to get the information out straight away, usually in very brief form, and add to it as soon as you get more. Then there are the fixed deadlines for TV and radio bulletins, and newspaper print runs. Respect them. An item for the top of the One O’Clock News is no good if it’s not ready until one minute past. A page lead for a newspaper is no good if you can’t get it into print in time to catch the delivery trucks. If you can’t meet deadlines, you are not fit for the job.

9: Be realistic

Think of when the story has got to be ready and think of everything that’s needed to make it work. Figure out how much time you can allow for each stage. Don’t set yourself impossible deadlines. Build in a bit of a margin, for safety. Deliver early if you can – but don’t sacrifice important content.

10: Keep in touch

Never underestimate the importance of good communications. It’s no use having a story if you can’t communicate it. Always know exactly how you’re going to be in touch with the office, whether it is by mobile phone, land-line, the internet, satellite phone or broadcast circuit. Whatever it is, try to have a backup. Check and double-check your communications.

The post What it takes to be a journalist first appeared on Media Helping Media.