On his personal blog, TBD‘s Steve Buttry offered a list of tips on how to verify facts and ensure accuracy when reporting. Here are some takeaways from the list, which I recently revisited:
- Get sources’ names right.
- Verify information from sources.
- Slow your sources down during interviews and “echo, echo, echo,” (aka repeat what they said to you to make sure you recorded it correctly).
- Make a distinction between information and quotes.
- If you get conflicting stories from sources, challenge them and seek confirmation for both.
Journalists don’t always have time to fact-check information after an interview for breaking news stories, so it makes sense to fact-check as much of it as you can while you’re talking with your source. My philosophy has always been to ask questions such as, “Can you elaborate on that a little?” “What did you mean when you said X?” “So what I’m hearing you say is X … is that correct?”
If you’ve done your research, you shouldn’t feel as though you’ll look dumb for asking questions that may seem obvious to the person you’re interviewing. Asking good questions can lead to more informed reporting — and to better and more accurate stories.
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