Media insurers may push strong journalism training to manage risks, costs

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal, May/Jun 2004 by Houston, Brant

It's been another year of limited support for training of journalists, but there might be help coming from an unexpected source: the media insurance industry.

The idea of dealing with, or covering, the insurance industry is a bane to most journalists. just thinking about insurance and its obtuse language drives most journalists to distraction.

But the time is coming that our profession will need to think a little more about insurance and better insuring itself against daily errors, diminishing reputations and loss of credibility. If not, the insurance industry and media lawyers may do it for us. Indeed, the insurance industry already has significantly raised media coverage rates as it becomes more concerned about news coverage and its own coverage of the news industry.

In the past year we have read about and heard the case files on such journalists as Jayson Blah; Stephen Glass and Jack Kelley.

These have been distressing stories, but we also know every profession will have these cases. And in truth, our profession, unlike some, has reacted candidly and aggressively.

More important, however, are the cases in our everyday work in which we can do the most widespread damage and incur the most losses. It's the daily story - when reporters are overburdened and managers overtaxed - where we hurt ourselves and put ourselves at risk.

That is where IRE can and does make a difference.

As we do our workshops in the United States and internationally, we find time and again journalists seldom have received training in most basic newsgathering and story-writing techniques. It's these basic techniques that keep us in good public standing, that provide context and understanding, that ensure accuracy, and that help keep us focused not on the sensational, but on the profound. Law firms do seminars on legal issues in newsgathering, access to meetings and records, and libel, but don't offer the basic training provided by professional journalists.

Because IRE encourages in-depth and thorough reporting, we, by nature, teach each other the techniques that improve daily and beat coverage - training that journalists don't often receive.

Consider how many journalists are taught:

* the nuances of sensitive cultivation and managing of sources?

* line-by-line, fact-checking so thorough that they could provide a footnote for every fact?

* how to use open records laws to find documents that support or contradict interviews?

* how to use databases to look at all the records - not just a handful - to ensure anecdotes reflect the trends, not just the unusual or bizarre?

* how to edit a story by asking tough questions while still supporting the reporter?

In the continual discussion of improving "the product" - our news coverage - it's surprising that this training is not mandated.

In other professions, insurers and attorneys would strongly encourage the type of training provided by IRE - if only to prevent losses. For other businesses, insurers provide financial incentives, such as premium reductions, for professional training because it is good "risk management." In fact, media lawyers and insurers are starting to direct their attention more pointedly toward these issues; recently they held a national conference in Kansas City on the issue of "reporting misconduct," risk and risk management in the media.

We expect, as they study the issues more closely, the lawyers and insurers are going to see that our kind of nuts-and-bolts training will go a long way toward preventing errors and sloppy omissions in reporting and editing.

As a profession, we will need to work closely with these groups to assure that probing, aggressive journalism - not diluted and weak reportage - will be encouraged and will prevail.

Good journalism involves risks. We should not avoid those risks, but we should manage them better through regular and meaningful training.

Brant Houston is executive director of IRE and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. He can be reached through e-mail at brcmt@ire.org or by calling 573-882-2042.