Why don T&T media professionals check facts?
Since leaving T&T about seven years ago, I’ve been relying mostly on T&T daily newspapers’ websites to keep abreast of local news. Before leaving, I never used their websites; I preferred poring over the physical newspapers instead. My transfer from the physical to the online versions of the news had an interesting side-effect: spotting errors is easier. I’m not talking just about typos, or more correctly typographical errors, which include incorrect use of grammar and poor spelling. These have been around for some time in the T&T media, I guess. Otherwise the late Undine Giuseppi wouldn’t have been able to sustain her long-running English language column. I’ve complained to the editors of both these dailies about this several times over the past few years, to little or no avail. While egregious and frequent, typos can cause relatively little harm to the average reader. No, I’m referring to the more dangerous kind: the factual errors. These cover a range of forms. I’ve observed simple
