Newspaper Errors: Reporters Dispute Most Source Claims
Research on newspaper accuracy has shown that news sources contend that about half the newspaper articles citing them contain at least one mistake^—usually a misquote, omission or distorted emphasis. But, most ofthe half dozen studies which examined errors in newspapers excluded the reporter from the analysis, concentrating almost entirely on the perceptions of news sources. One study which did look at reporter response found that a reporter's focusing on a particular element of a story, considered an "extremely newsworthy angle" by the reporter, can be considered an error of overemphasis by the source.^ Reporter-source disagreement over such things as story angle and even whether the reporter considers a source-perceived error to actually be an error has been neglected in past research. This investigation was designed to look at reporter perceptions of error, as well as source perceptions, and to determine some of the causes of error in newspaper stories. The study examines whether error varies by reporter experience, by deadline, and by type of content or length. Although reporter views are generally not known, the number of stories containing error, according to sources in five major source accuracy studies dating from the 1930s, ranges from 40% to 60% of all locally produced news items.^ The perceived rate of error in these five studies ranges from three to six mistakes in every four stories. Between half and two-thirds of these sourceperceived errors are judgmental determinations, depending on how misquotes are classified. Berry* listed subjective errors as including omissions, distortions of
Error message: Creation of a revised codebook for analysis of newspaper corrections
The codebook for analyzing newspaper corrections has remained nearly unchanged since 1936. This project sought to create and validate a new codebook. Study 1 analyzed a previous application of the original codebook and proposed a new version, which Study 2 and Study 3 then applied and tested. In both, the new codebook resulted in fewer underused categories and fewer uncategorized corrections. This study, therefore, recommends its new codebook for future analytical studies of newspaper corrections.
Training and maintaining the performance of dogs (Canis familiaris) on an increasing number of odor discriminations in a controlled setting
Abstract The number of substances detector dogs are trained to detect varies depending on the mission of the agency they serve. No studies have been conducted concerning how training multiple odor discriminations affects detection performance and refresher training requirements. This study used a controlled field setting to examine the effects of training dogs to detect multiple substances on their subsequent detection performance and refresher training requirements. Dogs were first trained to detect a single odor. Their detection performance was tested 10 days later and refresher training was then given to bring their performance back up to a predetermined standard. Following refresher training, detection of a new substance was trained, and approximately 10 days later the detection of both trained substances was tested. This sequence of testing, refresher training, and new odor training continued every 10 days until the dogs had been trained and tested on 10 odors. The detection of previously learned odors did not decrease as the number of substances trained increased. In fact, the amount of training required to refresh detection performance and to train new odor discriminations tended to decrease as more odor discriminations were trained.