Editing and fact-checking are not the same thing
You’re copy-editing a book about climate change. Countdown to Zero. 500 pages. Maybe a £1,500 invoice! It’s packed with facts. Sea temperatures, carbon emissions, ice melt… You are asked to do a simple editing job. You have no idea whether the facts are correct. Is it your job to fact-check? Thankfully, no. Editing and fact-checking are different disciplines.
If there are contradictions you make a query. If a number looks suspect. An extra zero, for example, you raise a query. But you don’t make changes.
And you don’t have to check sources and facts unless it’s in your brief. And then the invoice would be much higher!
Trusting the news
Where do you get your news? An online newspaper? A real newspaper with paper and ink? Weekly and monthly journals and magazines like The Spectator, New Statesman or Private Eye. Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? Or maybe a whole range of internet sources. Huffpost, perhaps, or Politico?
Have you used Reuters? It’s my prime go-to source of news.
Paul Reuter’s pigeon post
Reuters was established in 1851. Paul Julius Reuter was a German book publisher and editor. He had radical ideas. It was an age of revolution and he published pamphlets. The tweeter-king of his day.
But communication was tricky. He used pigeons!
Paul came to England and set up a financial news service from the Royal Exchange. The pigeons were retired to Bournemouth. It became a wire service. Reuter’s grew quickly. The Far East and South America rapidly became outposts.
Editing and fact-checking and neutral news
Reuters aims for neutrality. It has no political pitch. It avoids the word terrorist, for instance. More than 3,000 journalists work for Reuters in 200 locations worldwide.
And don’t think Reuters is old-fashioned. It may have used pigeons. But it was the first news service to use computers sixty years ago!
Coverage is extensive, the journalism is first-rate, and the editing impeccable. Why not try it? And if ever you do have to fact-check a climate change tome remember that Reuters have a brilliant back catalogue.