Shooting the messenger: Friday in Limerick shows importance of accurate reporting

FAKE news. Donald Trump took credit for coining the phrase which became mainstream during the 2016 US election campaign, but, made-up facts, exaggerations and massaged ‘truths’ have been with us since Jesus was a boy.

If any student of journalism, or indeed law, is looking for a good topic for their thesis then last weekend in Limerick would provide compelling subject matter.

There were two alleged violent incidents - both before the courts right now which restricts the press in terms of what they can report.

This is in the interest of balancing the right to a fair legal process with the public's right to information. Both incidents occurred on the same day - Friday - within the space of 12 hours.

The Limerick Leader became aware of the first incident (it occurred at around 11.30am) in the late afternoon and it was 9:53pm before we published an article. Why? We had to get our facts straight. We would not publish information on such a serious matter without getting garda confirmation and that confirmation came to us after 9pm. 

Because we work in the media we assume the vast majority of people would realise this, but it’s becoming blatantly obvious that more and more people are oblivious to the structures of reporting and the legwork that it takes to be able to stand over accurate reporting.

The amount of false, misleading and exaggerated information that piled up on social media in relation to this incident last Friday was incredible.

The Leader and other mainstream media were called out for having agendas and attempting to hide the story.

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The second incident occurred at approximately 9.40pm on O’Connell Street in the city and we published a story just before midnight at 11:46pm having gone to the scene for information.

The turnaround here was much faster as we were able to get to the scene very shortly after the incident and gather the facts. 

The consequences of people spreading fake news and exaggerated information was very clear to see last Friday. There was utter confusion and attempts to erode trust in the local media.

Responsible reporting does not happen as fast as we would all like - at the push of a button - it takes time and legwork to stand over stories and while we may not always get it right, we will always do our utmost to get to the heart and truth of a story before we press ‘publish’.