This column is part of a series written by seniors from the pilot senior seminar on American citizenship. The class is led by its students, whose interests and experiences are as diverse as their areas of study. These columns are their lessons.
We recently led a seminar on journalism and citizenship, and when we asked our classmates how many of them had been misquoted by The Daily Tar Heel, the most-read paper on campus, about two-thirds of our 16-person class raised their hands.
The DTH plays an integral role in the shared experience of our community. It adorns the walls of restaurants on Franklin Street, a testament to its ability to powerfully capture moments in our communal history.
You might hate the paper, or you might read it every day, but few people neglect to pick it up when something happens. It’s a conversation starter at UNC.
For many students, being quoted in the DTH is the first time they see their names in print. Their interactions with the DTH not only shape their perceptions of this paper but also of the media more broadly.
It’s imperative that journalists get it right. That sounds obvious, but as veteran reporter of The (Raleigh) News & Observer and Pulitzer Prize winner Pat Stith told us, “It’s not enough to get the quote correct … That’s child’s play. What you want to do is get the truth.”
We are biased on this subject. We both worked at the DTH as reporters and editors for three years. We know the hard work it takes to produce a high-quality paper every day while simultaneously teaching new journalists.
We now work at reesenews.org, the digital publication at UNC’s journalism school, where we face many of the same challenges without the level of scrutiny the community puts on the DTH.
We’re not immune to this problem. We’ve filed our fair share of corrections to inaccurate stories. But our experience has shown how rarely we appreciate the impact an unfair story can have, often because we don’t hear from subjects after the stories run.
