Eyes Wide Shut: Failures to Teach Student Journalists About Eyewitness Error

Introduction

What could other academic disciplines possibly know about eyewitnesses compared with journalists and journalism educators, who essentially talk to (or teach about using) sources and eyewitnesses on a daily basis?

A whole lot, it seems.

Typing “eyewitness” and “misidentification” into the search bar of Google Scholar leads to dozens of pages with results from peer-reviewed publications outside of mass communication, such as the Journal of Applied Psychology (Wells & Bradfield, 1998), Law and Human Behavior (Wells & Quinlivian, 2009), Marquette Law Review (Thompson, 2009), International Journal of Comparative Sociology (Weimann, Fishman, & Rattner, 1986), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Shriver, Young, Hugenberg, Bernstein, & Lanter, 2007), and Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Gross, Jacoby, Matheson, & Montgomery, 2005).

But where are the mass communication journals on this long list? Typing in the same search terms in the Communication & Mass Media Complete database leads to the following message: No results were found.

That seems problematic, because the conclusions of this academic, non-journalism and mass communication literature are startling and important to know for all journalists; many eyewitnesses are really bad at being eyewitnesses (Megreya & Burton, 2008), suggestive interviews and feedback lead to distorted eyewitness memories (Zaragoza, Payment, Ackil, Drivdahl, & Beck, 2001), racial incongruence negatively influences eyewitness accounts (Brigham, Bennett, Meissner, & Mitchell, 2007), and misleading post-event information could lead to false memories (Lindsay, 1993).

Many criminal convictions have been overturned after the justice system sent the wrong people to jail (Gross, 1987). For instance, hundreds of people have been released from death row and other prisons in the past decades after they were exonerated from the crimes for which they were convicted after eyewitness misidentification played an important role in their legal cases (Gross et al., 2005; Moushey & Crabbe, 2005). These are important things that all journalists and aspiring journalists should know, because reporters rely heavily on eyewitnesses in their work. Furthermore, journalism is considered the first draft of history (Shafer, 2010) and news coverage should, ideally, contain no misinformation (Craft, 2017). There are many media ethics texts and guidelines available to remind journalists of their main task: provide the facts and nothing but the facts (e.g., Mindich, 2000). Although, in practice, this is not always easy when eyewitnesses accounts are inaccurate.

There have been several attempts by journalism educators to train future reporters and editors, as well as the public at large, on the validity of eyewitness testimony. For example, most innocence institutes are located in law colleges, but the Medill Justice Project, Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, and the now-defunct Innocence Institute of Point Park University are sparse examples of confronting these issues for aspiring journalists concerning eyewitness testimony and misidentification. However, the lack of other scholarly efforts in this area by journalism educators is alarming. An important feature of the academic system in the United States is that tenured and tenure-track faculty receive course releases to conduct research, yet almost none of that time has been dedicated on eyewitness misidentification or related topics. Many educators bring their research back into the classroom and teach students about the data and findings to better prepare them for their professional careers after graduation. But you cannot present research that does not exist.

That leads to important questions: What are student journalists currently learning about the flaws of human memory and cognition? What are they learning about eyewitness contamination through interview questions and feedback? What are they learning about double-blind procedures that are adopted by many law enforcement agencies? And what do they know about eyewitness misidentification and the important role that could have on court procedures?

Truth and Accuracy

The public has high expectations for the work of journalists. They would like to be informed instantly when important issues arise or events unfold. Even more important, if not most important, they want news to be free of errors, omission, and mistakes (Karlsson, Clerwall, & Nord, 2017). That is not easy when the details are murky, stakeholders try to obscure the truth, and journalists need to make sense of complex situations with their own subjective opinion in mind. There are often no objective measures to make those decisions, despite the news media industry’s attempt to appear as objective as possible (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2001). Therefore, journalists try to stick to routines and practices that are widely accepted to indicate an honest attempt to be fair and leave out personal biases (Tuchman, 1972). As Clark (2014) maintained, “Journalists are truth-seekers, . . . pragmatists who follow their instinct and evolving routines designed to mark their work as trustworthy” (p. 26).

When journalists report on events, they are communicating information about things they have observed, but more often report on what others have seen. That is because journalists are usually assigned to cover an event or crisis after the fact. Consequently, they have to rely on the account of others (Berkowitz & Beach, 1993; Jacquette, 2007; Sigal, 1986). Sigal (1973) went one step further to claim that

[e]ven when the journalist is in the position to observe an event directly, he remains reluctant to offer interpretations of his own, preferring instead to rely on his news sources. For the reporter, in short, most news is not what has happened, but what someone says has happened or will happen. (p. 69)

Some have even maintained that journalists “don’t deal in facts, but in attributed opinions” (Gans, 1980, p. 130). Even in cases when their sources are lying, “journalists can suggest that they have done so but only if they find other sources who allow themselves to be quoted to that effect” (Gans, 2003, p. 47).

Yet, despite the efforts to find all information that is available to file a thorough news report, many of those information pieces are just not verifiable. Sometimes because there are no other sources available to collaborate the facts, and at other times, it is not impossible, yet very difficult, and it would take a very long time to get the facts straight. And patience, with the needy public in mind, is not a strength of the journalism industry and processes to verify facts are not flawless either (Tuchman, 1978).

Relying on eyewitnesses is often needed when information about events have not been captured by smartphones, webcams, closed-circuit television recordings, and so on. Eyewitnesses can provide journalists valuable information in those specific moments—as long as that information is correct. Yet, that may or may not be the case—that is the $1,000,000 question, yet possibly without a definitive answer. Which, according to Merril (1997), has demonstrated the difficult situation in which many journalists find themselves at any given day: “One reason journalists and others have much trouble with ‘the truth’ is that they are never quite sure just what kind of truth they’re dealing with” (p. 113).

For example, the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal published that “A Ward Road woman reported that she awoke shortly after 3 a.m. Thursday to find [name withheld] carrying her 6-year-old daughter out of the residence. He released the child and ran off after the mother gave chase” (Hoffman, 2018). This was the reporter’s description of the eyewitness account by the mother, but the man she accused—a neighbor—was released after DNA testing indicated another man was likely responsible for the kidnapping. The new suspect was bald with a white mustache and thin eyebrows, whereas the neighbor was 6 years younger and had dark hair, darker eyebrows, and a goatee. Even though the news report indicated that the neighbor was a suspect early on in the story, the description that “he released the child and ran off” seemed to be presented as fact, rather than a description made by an eyewitness in less than ideal circumstances. As his defense attorney stated, “It looks like the proof was predicated on the basis that there was an identification made by the light of the TV, at a time when a person would appear to be coming out of a deep midnight sleep” (Hoffman, 2018). Although the newspaper fulfilled a necessary duty by alerting a community about a kidnapping of a minor, there could also have been information about the consequences borne out of relying on one eyewitness account as sole evidence, which, in hindsight, ultimately was not evidence at all.

Eyewitness Error

It may seem ironic, but many people have limited knowledge about the human brain (Kahneman, 2011). Several studies have indicated that the public scores low on tests about human memory and cognition (e.g., Wise & Safer, 2004). More problematic, judges and jurors do not score much higher—and they are deciding guilt or innocence in criminal cases with eyewitness accounts at the center of testimony presented by prosecutors and defense attorneys (e.g., Benton, Ross, Bradshaw, Thomas, & Bradshaw, 2006; Magnussen, Melinder, Stridbeck, & Raja, 2010). According to Wells, Memon, and Penrod (2006), scientific research on eyewitness accounts “contained strong warnings to the legal system that eyewitness evidence was being overvalued by the justice system in the sense that its impact on triers of fact (e.g., juries) exceeded its probative (legal-proof) value” (p. 45). Walczyk et al. (2012) have warned “Eyewitness testimony is often the evidence most persuasive to juries despite its unreliability” (p. 887).

If the general public’s knowledge is limited about the human brain, as well as law enforcement officials and judicial appointees, why would journalists do much better? In fact, scholars have frequently been complaining about mistakes journalists made in describing the role of memory in legal cases. For instance, Simons and Chabris (2011) argued “media conflate normal forgetting and inadvertent memory distortion with intentional deceit” (para. 1). According to Wells et al. (2006), “The psychological processes leading to eyewitness error represent a confluence of memory and social-influence variables that interact in complex ways” (p. 45). Therefore, it is important for journalists to understand common causes for eyewitnesses describing events that never happened. For example, high stress levels could impact eyewitness memory (Deffenbacher, Bornstein, Penrod, & McGorty, 2004) and leading information, questions, or feedback could influence eyewitness testimony as well (Loftus, 2005).

Textbooks

Journalism educators and scholars could aid journalism professionals by providing valuable research that could be applied in the field. Peer-reviewed journals in journalism and mass communication consider themselves bridges between educators and professionals. A lack of academic research on eyewitness misidentification within those fields likely means that not many journalism educators are experts in that area and students need to look in other directions for guidance on these matters—if they are aware of these issues at all.

Textbooks in journalism courses might be the solution, because faculty members are often adopting at least one textbook for their courses or organize course binders with materials from multiple information sources. According to Besser, Stone, and Nan (1998), textbooks “serve as effective tools in improving the quality of education and have great influence on teaching and learning” (p. 5) and they “play a role in the culture through their power to confer legitimacy” to dominant positions in academic fields and society, thus highly influencing many college students in their respective majors and fields (Hardin, Dodd, & Lauffer, 2009, p. 429).

There is not a lot of research on textbooks in general (Besser et al., 1998). However, there are a few exceptions in studies focusing on certain aspects of journalism textbooks, such as news writing and reporting (Mirando, 2001), ethics (Mirando, 1998), disability issues (Hardin & Preston, 2001), gender representations (Steiner, 1992), social responsibility (McConnell, 1995), male hegemony (Hardin et al., 2009), and sports reporting (Weedon & Wilson, 2017).

This essay is focusing on news writing and/or reporting textbooks, as well as textbooks about news editing and media ethics. A wide variety of options in these segments of the textbook market exists. A select group of faculty members of a large journalism department in the United States was asked which readings they used in their writing, reporting, and editing courses, and additional instructor copies they had available. This resulted in a list of 20 books. This is not a census of all textbooks in these areas of instruction, but this amount was sufficient for the purpose of this exploration. All books were examined for references to eyewitnesses or closely related topics to get a better sense to what extent journalism textbooks provide information about eyewitness misidentification and other potential issues that journalists may encounter by relying on eyewitness testimonies and accounts.

In fact, the point of saturation was reached quickly going through the list of 20 textbooks, because there were mentions of eyewitnesses or related topics neither in the index nor in the main body of most examined writing textbooks (Arnold, 2000; Knight, 2010; Ryan & Tankard, 2005; Sumner & Miller, 2009), reporting textbooks (Bender, Davenport, Drager, & Fedler, 2012; Itule & Anderson, 2007; Killenberg, 2008; Rivers, 1984; Wenger & Potter, 2015), and editing textbooks (Brooks & Pinson, 2009; Friend, Challenger, & McAdams, 2005; Smith & O’Connell, 2003). Media ethics textbooks often discussed sources, but rarely were those pertaining to eyewitnesses. Instead, there were modules related to relationships with sources, granting anonymity, and confidentiality agreements (e.g., Christians, Fackler, Rotzoll, & McKee, 2001; Smith, 2003). In addition, discussions about the need for fact-checking were usually related to speech from official sources, not necessarily eyewitnesses (e.g., Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2001; Myers, 2014).

Eyewitness Issues in Textbooks

There were some textbooks that mentioned eyewitness(es) as a separate entry in the index. One of them had an entire chapter called “Eyewitnesses.” However, the information presented was only short descriptions of eyewitness and lacked discussion about eyewitness memory flaws (Wicker, 2002). Only one textbook mentioned some eyewitness issues, but did not even dedicate an entire paragraph to them (see Houston, Bruzzese, & Weinberg, 2002).

Melcher (2011) added a chapter on “Finding, Cultivating and Using Sources” (p. 279) in which he included a “Reliability of Sources” subheader early on. However, that was pertaining to political sources possibly not telling the truth. Other areas were more focusing on developing source relationships and protecting sources from harm because of contact with reporters. The following chapter, “Interviewing Principles and Practices” (p. 293) also focused on source relations and question types, yet nothing in relation to eyewitness testimony. Eyewitnesses were only mentioned in checklists on what information elements would be needed while covering motor vehicle accidents, plane crashes, and natural disasters. The mentions here were not important enough to include “eyewitness” in the book’s index.

“Eyewitness accounts” were mentioned twice in the index of Rich’s (2016) news writing and reporting textbook. However, the information provided in the text was just mere descriptions. In the chapter about “Crime and Punishment,” eyewitness accounts were introduced in context of investigating a crime: “Comments from neighbors may also be relevant. Be careful using accusations against named individuals. When in doubt, leave them out” (p. 387). In the second reference, advice for journalists was limited to “Get accounts from eyewitnesses and survivors. People make the story real and emotional. You need them for quotes in the main story and for sidebars. Ask people to reconstruct where they were and what they were doing at the time of the disaster” (p. 417). Eyewitnesses were not addressed directly in the “Interviewing Techniques” chapter, but it was mentioned to “use more sensitivity when interviewing” private individuals (p. 80).

One of the older works examined for the purpose of this article, MacDougall’s (1972) book on interpretive reporting had one section with an “Eyewitness Accounts” header, spread out over the length of about two pages (p. 157). It was primarily focused on the reporter as eyewitness, in essence, by being present on a scene as reporter. Most tips were pertaining to journalists needing to describe scenes honestly without providing a misleading account to the audience. In addition, it provided an example of news coverage by three wire services (Associated Press, United Press, and International News Service) and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) about the same event, a press conference of Dr. Otto John after he fled from West to East Germany in 1954. The lesson here was that journalists need to leave out their own biases when reporting. There were no discussions about any other aspects related to eyewitnesses.

Wicker (2002) included an entire chapter about eyewitnesses, although the discussion was not so much about people who had seen events. It is primarily describing his own experiences as a reporter in one of the cars following President John F. Kennedy’s (JFK) limousine when he was shot to death in Dallas. Ironically, the author did not see the actual shooting, being backed up by many cars behind JFK’s vehicle, and did not hear about it until minutes after it took place. He described a short interview with one eyewitness, Senator Ralph Yarborough, before stating that “a reporter has to rely not merely on information (certainly not on eyewitness information), but also on background, experience and instinct” (p. 95, italics in original). A few pages later, he stated, “Aside from the rare eyewitness story, most reporting is investigation” (p. 99). Wicker did not explain his hesitation to include eyewitness accounts in reporting.

That is in contrast to The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook by Houston et al. (2002), pointing out issues regarding eyewitness testimony. Initially, the book did not seem to include that kind of information. The authors early on introduced the concept of human sources, but that discussion was focused on people being able to provide more context about a paper trail or other people, which they call people trail. Other references to witnesses happened in courtroom contexts, but without much specificity. However, the authors included a section about wrongful convictions as part of the “Investigating Government: The Judicial System” chapter and elaborated on areas in the legal process that could be questioned and investigated:

Elements that suggest potential problems include coerced confessions, failure to run DNA tests where practical and to conduct careful analyses of them, information from paid jailhouse informants, inadequate line-up procedures that lead victims and witnesses to identify the wrong person, other unreliable eyewitness testimony, prosecutors and sheriffs worried about election returns, prejudicial statements by the prosecutors during trail and inept defense counsel. (p. 273, italics added)

Brooks, Kennedy, Moen, and Ranly (2002), publishing as The Missouri Group, on the contrary, were positive about that the role eyewitness could play to identify what has happened rather than relying on authorities and other types of officials. No negative aspect of eyewitness testimony was discussed in a section about reporting on accidents and fire stories: “The most accurate account of what happened usually comes from witnesses, and the investigators will try to find them” (p. 189).

A newer textbook by Brooks, Kennedy, Moen, and Ranly (2017) also included the “most accurate account” phrase and included some other information on how to find eyewitnesses through social media. In addition, the older textbook included a chapter focused on interviewing, which featured a section called “Ensuring Accuracy” (p. 51). However, that discussion was primarily centered on journalists needing to take good notes or recordings during interviews to avoid legal issues. The rest of the chapter was focused on types of questions and appropriate behavior for journalists during interviews. The newer textbook had similar information, although with an adjusted header: “Ensuring accuracy and fairness.” The introduction paragraph for that section was different as well:

Accuracy is a major problem in all interviews. Both the question and the answer may be ambiguous. You may not understand what is said. You may write it down incorrectly. You may not remember the context of the remarks. Your biases may interfere with the message. (p. 54, italics added)

Thus, ironically, the authors pointed out that the journalist’s memory may not be good enough to remember the context of their own notes, whereas they are praising eyewitnesses for providing a “most accurate account” later in the textbook.

Conclusion

Many local news networks present their station name in combination with the phrase “eyewitness news,” such as KABC (Los Angeles), WTHR (Indianapolis), and WLS (Chicago). This is done to give the impression that their reporters are on the scene of breaking news, thus, by default, are the best informed. This would particularly be the case when the reporters can provide eyewitness accounts of people who actually were near the news event, even though being present does not automatically translate into a correct description of what enfolded. Therefore, this essay is intended as a call to action for journalism educators and scholars to study an important aspect of journalism that has been overlooked in the classroom and in journalism and mass communication literature: eyewitnesses. In particular, the flaws of human memory and cognition that could lead to distorted accounts, regardless of whether sources provided the wrong information intentionally or unconsciously.

For many other academic disciplines and fields, this does not come to a surprise that eyewitnesses are often very bad in being an eyewitness. Hundreds of people on death row and others in seemingly hopeless legal fights for their own justice can attest to this (Saks & Koehler, 2005). Meanwhile, journalists report about these cases and many other subjects affected by eyewitness identification without basic knowledge of the limitations of the human brain.

In an era with heightened scrutiny for journalists accused of biased reporting, disseminating misinformation, and publishing fake news, it is important that journalists provide information that is as accurate as possible. Eyewitnesses become a liability in this process when they provide wrongful descriptions of what they thought happened. These accounts could be very important aspects in stories accusing others of misbehavior, criminal intent, or other actions with a negative connotation. False eyewitness accounts could lead news media into legal battles for publishing false information.

Journalists and student journalists need to at least become aware of eyewitness misidentification issues. This means that instructors need to present modules in reporting courses about this topic and textbook authors should add them in printed or multimedia form. That task would become a lot easier when numerous journalism scholars would create a body of knowledge about eyewitness issues in journalistic settings, in addition to the work of experts from social psychology, political science, and other areas. Even better, journalism researchers could collaborate with their peers from other disciplines to examine issues regarding eyewitness misidentification in interdisciplinary settings. These collaborations would allow undergraduate and graduate students to work on research that they can apply in their professional work or as educators teaching journalism—by giving them the necessary tools for effectively training future generations of journalists about eyewitness misidentification.

In particular, studies exploring how public misperceptions about specific crime cases are caused by initial eyewitness misidentification would demonstrate the importance of scrutinizing the use of eyewitness accounts in any type of news coverage. Future research could also provide more thorough content analyses of journalism textbooks to study how student reports and editors are being prepared to interview eyewitnesses and other types of human sources. This could include a larger variety of textbook topics, for instance, specialized interviewing textbooks. In addition, a survey of syllabi of writing and reporting courses, as well as other more specialized topics, would provide a better idea about what faculty are teaching students about issues involving eyewitness accounts and memory.

It may well be that numerous journalism educators are talking about eyewitness issues in the classroom and have designed exercises and assignments to raise awareness about these subjects (see Blom, 2018). If this were the case, it would be important to have these instructors connect with each other in open forums to learn more about each other’s experiences and practices. In addition, it would be important for journalism educators to connect with professional journalists. Those reporters and editors could provide aspiring journalists valuable examples from the field and the professionals could be connected to academic research that could answer some of the questions that may have or introduce them to phenomena they have never thought about in relation to interviewing their sources, each day on the job.