Correcting The Record

Indy Star executive editor Dennis Ryerson pens his Sunday column about last weekend's front-page correction on a story that included a major jury verdict mistake. Ryerson explains:

Aweek ago a headline at the top of our front page was clear and to the ipoint: "Physicians lose child abuse suit." A secondary headline added that: "Plaintiff awarded $400,000 in case alleging doctors didn't report abuse."

Unfortunately, the main headline, as was the story under it, was as inaccurate as it was clear. A jury held Methodist Hospital responsible for not identifying and reporting suspected abuse of an 11-month-old child who was returned to his mother and later beaten to death by the mother's boyfriend. The jury ruled that the two physicians involved in the case, Dr. Gary Thompson and Dr. Michael Turner, were not liable. No question, it was a very bad error.

Our newsgathering and editing processes include several steps to prevent mistakes. Reporters are expected to check and recheck the information in their stories. Stories go through multiple layers of editing before they are printed.

When we become aware of errors we correct them on Page 2 of our first, or "A," news section. We also append the correction to our archived stories and rewrite those stories to correct the error, to ensure that an error isn't repeated.

Some situations require more action on our part, however, and this was one of them.