680News - Lisa Brandt

Everybody makes mistakes. I make mistakes. You make mistakes. Absolutely no one is completely perfect although that’s the goal we strive for. The difference between your mistakes and mine is that thousands upon thousands of people tend to notice when I do it. Depending on what you do for a living that may not be the case when you err.

We all want to do a great job and be as accurate as we possibly can be. By and large we are like Ivory soap, 99.9 per cent pure – or error-free! But every once in a while something gets past us and we wear a collective blush until it’s corrected.

Our facts are checked and double-checked before they ever get to air but in the business of breaking news things can change on a dime. I’m reminded of the long day we all spent on the air, September 11, 2001. There was no way to understand the scope of what was going on when that first plane hit the World Trade Center and it was our job to not speculate but to bring you the facts as they were brought to us. They changed as the day wore on. It was as terrifying for us as it was for you that day. We were all grateful to have something demanding to concentrate on: our broadcasts.

Most errors are very minor in nature. Perhaps a reporter catches a few seconds with a police officer on the scene of the crime and that officer gives the information as best he knows it at the time. For example, he might say the victim is believed to be in his 30s. Hours later when the victim is positively identified, it turns out that he’s 21, but no one could have ascertained that at the time. That’s the kind of information that evolves as a story unfolds. It is a mistake but a very minor one and quite unavoidable. It certainly bears revising once it’s confirmed.

I once had an embarrassing brain freeze over a silly thing: Dr. Spock and Mr. Spock. I know who they are, believe me. When we were kids my younger brother held the television hostage whenever Star Trek was on so I’m well acquainted in Mr. Spock’s Vulcan ways. Dr. Spock, as you probably know, was a legendary child-rearing expert. But there was something about this occasion when I was called upon suddenly to name one of them that caused me to mix them up. Fortunately my faithful work husband Paul Cook was there to gently steer me back to the right Spock!

No one likes to be wrong and they like even less to be wrong in a public manner. With our team approach to news and the number of experienced people who work on both sides of the microphone, I can truly say that we are as reliable with the facts as anyone, anywhere, and even more so in most cases. We have great senses of humour – all of us – but we take the business of news very seriously indeed.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 8:33 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.