kerscher

Correct and accurate reporting of facts is a fundamental quality feature of journalism, including in the local section. How accurate are journalists’ facts at a time when many editorial offices are cutting back on staff? How many errors creep into reporting? And what do these errors mean for the credibility of an article? For the entire newspaper? The author explores these questions in this work. In doing so, he applies the accuracy research of Mitchell V. Charnley, who popularised this technique in 1936. The quality of the local sections of three different newspapers in eastern Bavaria is examined in terms of their accuracy, precision and freedom from error. In so-called accuracy research, the people mentioned in a journalistic text are confronted with what is written about them and the topics they are familiar with and are asked to evaluate how correctly the author has reproduced the facts.