Big stories, little details

Credibility demands that journalists strive to get both correct | Joel Belz

When Janet Cooke was caught in 1986 fabricating details of a story about drug users she wrote for The Washington Post, she fell into a trap that has tempted every journalist since Moses wrote the book of Genesis. The temptation is to focus more on the truth of the big story than on the accuracy of the details.

The big part of any story is its "gist" or its direction. Was Hurricane Bertha worse than expected or more of a false alarm? Was the church meeting sweet and unified or fractious and ugly? Is the drug problem near the nation's capital serious or is it getting better?

The irony for the journalist, and the accompanying temptation, is that it's entirely possible to get the big story right and still to be false in the supporting details. That's what Janet Cooke did. Her overall story was a faithful account. But in the process, she made up some fictitious characters and passed them off as real. So readers of the Post were trusting a liar to tell the truth. That's something good journalists avoid like the plague.