Ted Bridis, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications (UFCJC) Michael and Linda Connelly Senior Lecturer in Investigative Reporting, is quoted in “Data Glitch Leads to Error and a Reminder for Journalists” published on poynter.com on May 2.

The article features what happened after an inaccurate restaurant inspection was published in the Orlando Sentinel. The newspaper misidentified the establishment and the mix up compromised its reputation and caused a flood of negative comments on social media.

According to Bridis, when a newspaper publishes a story with wrong information like this, the implications are far-reaching.

“It’s bad,” he said. “It undermines the credibility further of a news organization when we publish information that turns out to be inaccurate, even when we’re not the ones that got it wrong. We’re supposed to check this stuff.”

Bridis said the restaurant mix-up is a lesson to journalists to always be skeptical of data coming from an official source.

“It just reinforces that we’ve got to do a better job of verifying information that the government gives us,” Bridis said. “I would imagine this is going to be a wake-up call to a lot of editors … who publish these restaurant inspection reports to think, well, sometimes they might be wrong.”

Bridis praised the Sentinel for quickly correcting the mistake and being transparent about how it happened in a second, stand-alone story.

“I thought it was a smart idea to write a separate story. You want to make the corrected story as prominent as the original erroneous material that you published,” Bridis said.

The Sentinel has changed its policy and will now wait 24 hours before publishing stories to give the reporter more time to hear back from restaurant owners for comment and more time for the state to fix any mistakes online.

“It’s very reasonable to say we’re going to slow things down so that we can have more time to check these things out before they’re published,” Bridis said. “A lot of other editors … around Florida probably ought to be thinking the same thing.”

Posted: May 7, 2024
Category: College News
Tagged as: Data Check, Orlando Sentinel, poynter.com, Ted Bridis