Society of Professional Journalists, July 29, 2006
- Do you have a high level of confidence about the facts in your story and the sources that are providing them? If not, can you tell your story in a more accurate manner? If you have any doubts about your sources, can you delete them or replace them and achieve a higher likelihood of reliability?
- Have you attributed or documented all facts?
- Have you double-checked the key facts?
- Can you provide the properly spelled name and accurate telephone number of every source cited?
- Are you highly confident that all the factual statements in your story reflect the truth?
- Are you prepared to defend publicly your fact checking and whatever other measures that were taken to verify your story?
- Are the quotes in your story presented fairly, in context?
- Are you quoting anonymous sources? Why are you using those. Are you prepared to defend publicly the use of those sources?
- Are you using any material documents or pictures provided by anonymous sources? Why? What is your level of confidence about the validity of this material? Are you prepared to defend publicly the use of that material?
- Have you described persons, minority groups, races, cultures, nations, or segments of society - e.g. business people, Viet Nam veterans, cheerleaders - using stereotypical adjectives? Are such descriptions accurate and meaningful in the context presented?
- Have you used potentially objectionable language or pictures in your story? Is there a compelling reason for using such information? Would the story be less accurate if that language or picture were eliminated?
- Do your headlines (or broadcast promos or teases) accurately present the facts and context of the story to which they are referring?
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