Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

In the hours following the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords on January 8, NPR News made a tragic situation even worse by erroneously reporting her death in one of their hourly newscasts. The error was corrected shortly thereafter but the damage was done.

Alicia Shepard, NPR’s Ombudsman, posted a revealing article about the chain of events leading up to this error, and the aftermath, in her blog today. I think it’s worth a look to see how NPR operates in these kinds of situations. It’s also a strong argument for having an ombudsman, sometimes also called a “public editor,” in a news organization. NPR is among the very few broadcast or cable news organizations that have one, to the network’s credit.

I hope NPR News tightens its policies about sources to use in these kinds of situations, as Alicia recommends.

The management of NPR News has been shaken up with the resignation of the network’s top news executive, Ellen Weiss. Ellen was a key person in the termination of Juan Williams’ contract as an NPR news analyst last October.

David Folkenflik’s report for Morning Edition about the Ellen Weiss resignation and the findings of an external review commissioned by NPR’s Board of Directors about the Williams contract termination is linked here; NPR News blogger Mark Memmott reviews the whole chain of events (with extensive links) in a blog post linked here.

One thoughtful outside observer of all this is Jeffrey Dvorkin, who managed NPR News for a time and was subsequently NPR’s first Ombudsman. His blog post about Ellen Weiss’ exit is here. I have frequently appreciated Jeffrey’s wisdom about the news business and I think he has some helpful perspective to offer about this whole situation — which prompted me to share all of the above with you here.

There has been much discussion today within the circle of NPR station managers about whether NPR News has given this story too much attention in the past 24 hours, or if the quality and quantity of coverage is on target. From personal experience, I would say that covering your own organization as a reporter or editor is a hard thing to get right. If you’d like to weigh in with a comment on this, I would be interested in what you have to say.