Recently, several news outlets published headlines claiming that the popular South Augusta restaurant Villa Europa was closing, when the business is actually looking to move locations. This led to a bit of somewhat justifiable social media outrage.
Meanwhile, reservations for tables at the restaurant soared, I am told.
To state that a business is closing when it is actually relocating is misleading, to say the least. I do not think that any of our local news groups went out of their way to mislead the public, but there is plenty of misinformation to be found in media. Sometimes it is not proper follow-through and other times it is tied to an agenda.
It was former President Donald Trump that coined the term “fake news,” but misleading, inaccurate or outright lies have existed in the media since the invention of the printing press.
I have a book in my collection titled, “The Titanic Disaster: As Reported in the British National Press April -July 1912,” that is a compilation of nearly all of the news articles from 1912 pertaining to the sinking of the RMS Titanic and some of the headlines are almost laughable if they weren’t describing such a terrible tragedy.
Despite wireless messages clearly indicating the ship was sinking, several newspapers claimed the ship was being towed to New York, others fabricated a tale of heroism where all of the passengers were saved by the RMS Carpathia; and once the truth was known, the presses went into overdrive with stories of men dressing as women to get a seat in a lifeboat in an era where almost all men wore mustaches.
There is a huge difference between a 15-year-old boy with a shawl over his head and a grown man dressing in drag to save his skin.
Even Augusta’s own Archie Butt had columns devoted to him, spinning yarns about him using his fists to keep men out of the boats and at one point even firing a gun. Butt was a hero, but all eyewitness accounts portray him politely assisting women to the boats and tossing deckchairs overboard to assist swimmers, not swashbuckling like Erroll Flynn.
In many cases, the misinformation was unintentional as newsmen were relying on wireless, which was the Twitter, or X, of its day. Others, however, deliberately spread mistruths to sell copies of their newspapers.
When we started The Augusta Press, our intention was to provide a public service, but a newspaper is a business that must pay its employees and other bills. While our publisher, Joe Edge, has a philanthropic spirit, he doesn’t have the means to run a near million-dollar-a-year operation out of his own back pocket.
A modern newspaper needs both a healthy subscriber base and the ability to sell advertisements to remain afloat. To sell ads, the newspaper needs clicks.
We decided early on that The Augusta Press would not accept paid content or “infomercials,” and our editors pay very close attention to every word submitted to uphold the highest of journalistic standards.
We have, in the past, had to revise some mistakes made in news articles, which happened due to human error, and make corrections when appropriate. But the only times people have demanded retractions have been because the facts portrayed them in a less-than-stellar light, but the facts themselves were not disputed.
Readers have always had the responsibility of vetting where they get their news, especially before they share an item on social media, or chatting about it at the barber shop as if it were the Gospel. Most astute readers will know that Fox News and MSNBC are going to slant the news to fit with a particular agenda, but there are some subtle red flags to look out for to make sure what is being read is credible.
First of all, no respectable news organization will publish an anonymous, or unsigned “insider” column. If the author is not willing to reveal his or her name, then whatever is written should be treated as fiction.
The Augusta Press will occasionally publish a column as a “staff report,” and this is generally what is called “spot news” where several staff members collaborate. However, all members of our staff and their bios are clearly accessible on the main page, which brings me to my second point:
Every credible news organization will have a full list of their staff and their bios. On our website, the tab labeled “Meet the Press” has a bio of all of our employees and their email addresses for contact are included at the bottom of their articles. If a news organization does not have such a listing, then it is an indication that the organization accepts works by people who are not vetted as journalists or publishes paid content.
Headlines are important to watch. If the headline contains a “cliffhanger,” that is, you have to click on the headline to find out ‘who shot JR,’ then it is likely nothing more than click bait.
All news articles should have more than one source unless it is something like a report of an armed robbery, where the press statement by law enforcement is sufficient. In fact, a news article should have multiple sources or documents to make sure that the entirety of the story is being presented.
The author should at least show they attempted to reach multiple sources.
Readers must be wary of any news article that is based off of a singular unidentified source. In almost all cases, some form of documentation can be found to back up a source’s claims. I do use unidentified sources if, and only if, I can find paper documentation or other human sources (sometimes unidentified themselves) to substantiate what I am being told.
Sources should only be unidentified if it is necessary to protect them from some sort of retaliation, not because they just wish to keep their name out of the newspaper.
Journalists are human, and they do err, but there is a good reason that the field of journalism now ranks below ambulance chasing lawyers in public opinion. There are charlatans out there motivated by either political ideology or the almighty dollar.
I remember the days when journalists such as Woodward and Bernstein were respected and superheroes such as Superman, Supergirl and Spiderman doubled as journalists by day in the comics. While I am too old and too fat to fit into leotards and a cape, I promise that come hell or high water, I and the newspaper I helped establish will always tell the full truth to the public. Our credibility is our lifeblood.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
