Social media and a case of mistaken identity: A newspaper’s response to journalistic error

Introduction

The ‘scramble’ by journalists in the digital age to get stories published online as quickly as possible, including photographs if obtainable, has not only increased the pressure on editorial staff to source material via social media but also provided opportunities for more errors to occur (Berkowitz and Liu, 2016; Riordan, 2014; Sienkiewicz, 2014; Silverman, 2015). Once mistakes that are published online come to the attention of the news organisation, they can be quickly removed or amended, and evidence of their existence may no longer be traceable. There is still a potential fallout for a news organisation in a loss of its credibility if erroneous information is noticed and publicly criticised by readers and other news organisations locally and around the world (Berkowitz and Liu, 2016; Fitts, 2014; Pew Research Center, 2011; Tenore, 2010). As a result, the ‘online apology’, as a fairly recent phenomenon, has emerged as an element of digital journalism which is worthy of investigation. This article presents our research into one particular occurrence, where a news organisation used social media as a platform for an apology following its failure to uphold traditional journalistic standards.

On 28 July 2014, the New Zealand Herald – an important daily newspaper with combined online and print readership of 1.34 million per week ¹ – mistakenly published a photograph of American actor Ryan Dunn from the reality television series Jackass, claiming it to be that of a young New Zealander killed while fighting for the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza. The news values of novelty, negativity and proximity (Bednarek, 2015; Bell, 1991; Caple and Bednarek, 2013; Richardson, 2007) emanating from a story connecting New Zealand to a major Middle Eastern crisis that was attracting global attention would have been too good for the New Zealand Herald to resist as its lead article that day. But a series of lapses in the newsroom clearly occurred when a photograph sourced from the young man’s Facebook page to accompany the article proved to be the wrong person.

The chance capture of the New Zealand Herald’s correction of the error was recorded during our collection of data for another academic research project comparing hard copy and online news. The subsequent apologies from the newspaper’s editor (appearing in the microblogging site, Twitter, and also on the New Zealand Herald website), plus the online responses we collected from the public and from other news organisations, provided a useful case study on the challenges of journalistic practice in the digital age.

In linguistic terms, an apology is regarded as a speech act, providing an opportunity for a person or organisation to save face by acknowledging a transgression. In more recent times, a public apology has become a ‘common device for image restoration’ by ‘states, organizations and public figures’ (Kampf, 2009: 2257, 2258). However, as our findings in this study show, the New Zealand Herald’s apology combines image restoration with paradigm repair – the latter being an attempt to ‘assure society that professional practice remains viable although boundaries have temporarily been crossed’ (Berkowitz and Liu, 2016: 158). Such ‘boundary work’ –indicating what is or is not legitimate journalistic practice – is crucial for how the practice defines itself and maintains its credibility (Carlson, 2015; Revers, 2013), particularly in the digital age when an institution finds it necessary to defend itself by ‘drawing boundaries between who can be a part of the interpretive community and who cannot, between what is and what is not acceptable practice’ (Steiner et al., 2013: 706).

The public’s online comments about the error and the New Zealand Herald apology were examined using critical discourse analysis (CDA), given that discourse (i.e. language in use) is a form of social practice involving a ‘particular discursive event and the situation(s), institution(s) and social structure(s), which frame it’ (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997: 258). CDA (which is discussed in more detail later) offers theoretical and methodological perspectives relating to the relationship between text and context – that is, it is important to review the apology in its wider socio-cultural context to fully understand its meaning. Hence, our inclusion also in this study of an investigation of the newsroom practices that led to the mistake and what was done to ensure such errors would not happen in future.

Therefore, in this article, we first determine the sequence of events that led to the New Zealand Herald publishing the wrong photograph in order to provide insights into the weaknesses that can exist within journalism practice when a boundary is crossed that ‘differentiates the occupational turf of journalism from other forms of public communication’ (Hermida, 2015: 38). Second, we highlight the public criticism that resulted from the error and could damage the news organisation’s reputation and by extension its journalistic authority. Third, taking the view that language is power (a key element in CDA), our research analyses the editor’s published apology to identify the ways in which the New Zealand Herald engaged in both ‘image restoration’ (Benoit, 1995) and ‘paradigm repair’ (Berkowitz and Liu, 2016), not only in saying sorry but also in explaining what went wrong within journalistic routine. We systematically analyse the linguistic strategies that count as a realisation of an apology (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984) in this effort to repair the New Zealand Herald’s reputation as a reliable news source and to create a greater understanding of the challenges facing journalists in the digital era. First, however, it is necessary to consider apologies in the context of online news.

The age of the apology

We are living in the ‘age of the apology’ when everyone from politicians to celebrities is publicly saying sorry for a wide range of transgressions (Bloch, 2014: n.p.). No matter how careful journalists are, errors will occur, so it is not surprising that corrections and apologies are a regular feature in all news media with some publications allocating specific sections or web pages for this purpose. ²

Newspaper accuracy has long been a concern for researchers (Berry, 1967; Blankenburg, 1970; Charnley, 1936; Maier, 2005). While some attention has been paid to examining corrections published by the media (Maier, 2007), when it comes to apologies, the literature has focused more on how journalists report the apologies of others, such as corporates or politicians, rather than on how their own news organisations tackle apologies (see Kampf, 2011).

Errors by news organisations range from basic typographical mix-ups and spelling mistakes to errors of fact (McAthy, 2013; Silverman, 2010; Tenore, 2010). However, with journalism’s increasing reliance on social media in providing citizen-generated content and the ability to rapidly disseminate news online, more opportunities for errors exist (Berkowitz and Liu, 2016; Riordan, 2014; Sienkiewicz, 2014; Silverman, 2015). The inherent danger for news organisations is that the same social media tools that facilitate the rapid dissemination of news also make it easier to identify and distribute errors. This more negative ‘sharing’ can come in the form of comments attached to a story or on the Facebook page of either the news organisation or the user. Stories can also be ‘liked’ on Twitter or retweeted, they can be forwarded via email or they can be shared using other social media, such as Instagram or Google Plus. As Briggs (2010) wrote, ‘In the digital age, accuracy is an even rockier road. Transparency and interactivity mean errors will be highlighted in very public ways’ (p. 306).

To overcome this dilemma, for example, the online magazine Slate reacted quickly when it published a picture of actor Javier Bardem on Twitter instead of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Within five minutes, Slate’s social media editor had issued a correction as a reply to the original Tweet, so that anyone viewing it could also see the correction. As Silverman (2014: para. 5) pointed out, the advantage of this is that you can make the correction without having to show the error again.

The struggle between verifying information before publication of a story and being first to ‘break’ the news online sees the boundaries of what is legitimate journalistic practice being increasingly tested. The practice of verification is a way journalism differentiates itself from other forms of public communication and on which it depends for much of its status and authority (Hermida, 2015). Yet what exactly constitutes verification, especially in the ‘new ecology of news’ (Hermida, 2015: 37) brought about by social media, continues to be debated (see Kenix, 2016).

Communications scholars and practitioners do agree, however, on the importance of accuracy to an organisation’s credibility (Hermida, 2012), and corrections are part of what Joseph (2011) refers to as ‘accountability in the newsroom’ (pp. 706, 707). She describes corrections as having a ‘dual’ purpose, in that ‘[t]hey ensure that news consumers receive the correct or updated facts, and they allow news organisations to demonstrate their acknowledgement of a gaffe – showing that they are, in other words, accountable for their mistakes’. The New Zealand Press Council (NZPC, an industry self-regulating body), like many of its counterparts around the world, affirms that a ‘publication’s willingness to correct errors enhances its credibility and, often, diffuses complaint’, and it recommends that ‘significant errors should be promptly corrected with fair prominence’ (NZPC, n.d.).

In some cases, however, a simple published correction is insufficient. If the journalistic rule system has been transgressed through a major blunder that puts the reputation of a news organisation at stake, measures must be taken for ‘image restoration’ (Benoit, 1995). In addition, ‘paradigm repair’, according to Berkowitz and Liu (2016), may also be necessary. Their research examined journalists’ sourcing of inaccurate information from social media in the reporting of the fatal shooting of pupils and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut, in 2012. They concluded that the ‘paradigm repair’ in this case involved the media moving the discussion away from the errors that occurred to encouraging conversation on the challenges of reporting in the digital era.

Editorial apologies seem to be reserved for major retractions that may have led to legal action ³ and occur less frequently than corrections or clarifications involving a typographical or factual error. Kinsey’s rather tongue-in-cheek view that media apologies ‘are carefully worded, finely crafted and stick in editors’ throats’ (Franklin et al., 2005: 17) suggests that there is more that is going on in this specific genre, which is deserving of investigation. The act of apologising can follow certain linguistic strategies, whether this is for the speaker to rectify a situation (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984) or lessen responsibility for their misdeeds (Deutschmann, 2003). Kampf (2009), for example, used discourse analysis to understand how political actors realise apologies ‘to renew their moral status, or use them as tools for image restoration and for managing relations with other actors in the public arena’ (p. 2259). We therefore analyse the New Zealand Herald’s apology by way of CDA, which includes an examination of language in the context of journalistic practice to understand what really happened that day.

The following three questions guided our research:

CDA as theory and method

CDA offers a different perspective from other approaches in discourse studies, in that it seeks to analyse, interpret and explain a particular problem or issue. From a theoretical perspective, CDA is concerned with the notion that the power of social groups or institutions is enacted through discourse and social interaction. Certainly, the news media are classified as having institutional power because of their ability to source information, re-contextualise and disseminate it widely to the extent that it can persuade people to think a certain way (Fairclough, 1995; Van Dijk, 1988). Any challenge to this authority would be taken seriously by a news organisation, particularly when its survival is reliant on audience numbers and advertising support. How the media discursively construct themselves through apologies is crucial to their authority and maintenance of ‘power’. In fact, discursive strategies and linguistic devices are known in general to function in the construction, justification (or preservation), transformation and dismantling (or destruction) of identities (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001).

The use of CDA by academics in a wide range of research disciplines and its application to many different genre types – from conversation and interview transcripts to documents, news reports and political speeches – has resulted in the methodological frameworks for analysis being equally diverse (Van Dijk, 2001). Norman Fairclough, Ruth Wodak and Teun van Dijk are the most notable academics who developed CDA as a research tradition by way of critical linguistics (Fowler et al., 1979) – yet each in their own right adopts a different approach (see Wodak and Meyer, 2009). A common denominator of CDA approaches, however, is the relevancy of the context in which texts are situated as part of the analysis. That is, texts should not be analysed in isolation if we are to fully understand how they operate in real-world contexts. In this study, we apply Fairclough’s (2010) three-dimensional framework, which he used to investigate media texts. This involves the close examination of the text, but at the same time takes into account the wider ideological and societal context (socio-cultural practice), as well as considering the conventions and rules surrounding its production and consumption (discursive practice). In other words, in this study following are the actions we perform:

The relevancy of this research is that there are concerns and recognised challenges surrounding newsroom verification practices of material sourced by journalists from social media (Silverman, 2014). However, with communication technologies continuing to develop in an online world and the transparency this brings, powerful institutions such as the media are more likely to come under scrutiny. In addition, pressure for the instantaneous delivery of news challenges journalism ethics and news practice to an extent that warrants investigation.

Catching the error and monitoring the response

While taking successive screenshots of the home page of the New Zealand Herald over the day on Monday, 28 July as part of an online news research project, we became aware that the photograph of a young man accompanying the lead story, headlined ‘Kiwi Killed in Gaza Gunfight’, had changed. It was replaced with the picture of another man called Guy Boyland, who had similar features. No reference was made to the change in the online edition of the New Zealand Herald, but we tracked any further activity associated with the incident and recorded the time frame within which it occurred. Further investigation led us to identify a one sentence apology that the paper had posted on the microblogging site Twitter stating, ‘Our apologies to Guy Boyland’s family for the wrong photo on this morning’s lead story’. Around 10 am on the same day, a more comprehensive apology was posted on the New Zealand Herald website but not on its home page. A couple of hours later, a new tweet was posted that linked to a statement on the online site from the New Zealand Herald editor, Shayne Currie, with the headline: ‘Photo error: Our apologies to Guy Boyland’s family’, followed by the standfirst: ‘A statement from New Zealand Herald editor Shayne Currie regarding the incorrect use of two images’. The same text of the apology was also published on page three of the hard-copy edition of the New Zealand Herald on 29 July, although a small photograph of Guy Boland and the headline ‘Herald photo error: Our apologies to Guy Boyland’s family’ also appeared as a newsbite on the front page.

At the same time, we noticed numerous comments about the New Zealand Herald’s mistake on the newspaper’s Facebook page. The discursive practice dimension of Fairclough’s (1992) CDA framework ‘specifies the nature of the processes of text production and interpretation’ (p. 4). Therefore, to explore further how far the news had travelled on various online platforms and the discourses that were constructed in response to the mistake, we conducted a Google search using the words ‘NZ Herald Guy Boyland’. We found coverage of this incident on news websites (including The Guardian, the Daily Mail and The Independent in Britain, The Journal in Ireland, the online news site Stuff in New Zealand, International Business Times and The Times of Israel); by media commentators (on Mumbrella and Mashable in Australia, and iMediaEthics and the Poynter Institute in the United States) and we located a number of discussion groups on Twitter (in response to the New Zealand Herald’s Twitter apology), on Reddit and on weblogs (e.g. Petapixel and WhaleOil). Because of limitations of space, we present here a brief overview of the discourse in response to the mistake.

Out of the 270 comments we collected relating directly to the apology and to journalism practice, 90 per cent were unforgiving, using language that indicated discourses of negativity and criticism towards the New Zealand Herald and to the media in general. Some people labelled the mistake an ‘epic fail’, ‘a massively stupid error’, ‘a disgrace’, ‘appalling’ or the ‘gaffe of the year’. One tweet referred to the New Zealand Herald’s response as a ‘lame arse apology’, and other commenters called for the resignation of the editor. We found that these negative comments generally transitioned from an initial disbelief that the mistake occurred (‘Wait, was it a photo of Ryan Dunn?’) to a questioning of journalistic practice and a failure to check (‘How could the editor miss that!’ ‘No time for fact checking, let alone even getting the basic facts straight’) and, finally, to anger that it actually happened (‘Simply put: don’t use something without verification. You just don’t do it’.). As mentioned earlier, journalistic practice became a target for criticism with some commenters referring to modern-day journalism as ‘lazy’ and querying why simple verification procedures were not in place.

The integrity of the New Zealand Herald’s journalism was also challenged by other news organisations, both locally and internationally. Some media chose simply to reproduce the apology verbatim or parts of it, though such re-contextualisation only served to draw attention to the mistake and further embarrass the New Zealand Herald. For example, the Television New Zealand (TVNZ, 2014) website ran a story with the headline ‘NZ Herald apologises to fallen soldier’s family over Jackass photo blunder’, while a headline in The Independent newspaper in the United Kingdom stated, ‘Newspaper somehow runs photo of Jackass’ Ryan Dunn instead of dead Israeli soldier’ (Hooton, 2014). Media bloggers also contributed to the debate, with Petapixel commenting, ‘Using a deceased person’s Facebook or Twitter picture without permission to illustrate an article is already an ethically questionable, albeit common, practice’ (Cade, 2014: para. 6).

Such comments using emotive words inferring stupidity and lack of common sense, such as ‘fail’, ‘gaffe’ or ‘blunder’, did little to support the reputation of the New Zealand Herald, which has a history dating back to the 1860s, and has been generally conservative in its editorial stance. Therefore, when considering the New Zealand Herald error and these online discourses of negativity, our first objective was to establish exactly how a photograph of a reasonably well-known television personality ended up illustrating a report of the death of New Zealand-born, Israeli soldier, Guy Boyland. We examined the working practices in the newsroom of the New Zealand Herald, as well as speaking in confidence with several journalists there about this case of mistaken identity. What appears to have happened resulted from a series of unfortunate events which we relate next.

What happened in the newsroom

The journalist covering the story about Guy Boyland initially telephoned the soldier’s New Zealand-based grandparents. While talking to them about their grandson, the journalist asked if they had a photograph. Traditionally, a reporter would have visited the home of the grandparents and borrowed a hard copy of a photograph from the family. But, as is becoming increasingly common since the advent of the Internet, in this case the journalist was directed to the young man’s Facebook page for information.

Following the phone call, the reporter chose eight photographs from the profile section of Guy Boyland’s Facebook page and sent them to the picture editor to decide which one should illustrate the story. While the reporter finished writing the text of the story, the picture editor chose the photograph with no input from the reporter or news editor. Hence, everyone was working independently and nobody realised that the photograph was not of the same person referred to in the story. As soon as the New Zealand Herald realised its mistake, it changed the photograph and tweeted an apology. From the responses we have already related, it was clear that the reputation of the news organisation was at risk. But what were the strategies employed in the apology to counteract this situation and for the New Zealand Herald to regain the trust of its readers?

‘Performing’ an apology

Analysing how the New Zealand Herald represented itself through the discourse of its apology in response to this case of mistaken identity is key to understanding the concept of ‘image restoration’ when it comes to the news media. CDA with its focus on the power of language provides both a theoretical and methodological approach to this study, particularly since an apology – defined in linguistic terms as a ‘post-event speech act’ (Spencer-Oatey, 2008: 19) – is where the speaker recognises that a social norm has been violated and admits to at least some partial involvement in what has occurred (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984). Apologies can range from a few spoken words to a long, written text or speech, although the act of ‘performing’ any apology usually involves some degree of loss of face and an attempt to ‘placate the hearer’ (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984: 206). ⁴ What an apologist says and how it is said, however, will determine the impact of the apology, and we wished to establish the extent to which the New Zealand Herald sought to enact image restoration and paradigm repair through the 10 sentence apology that it posted on its website and linked to via Twitter, and which it also published in the next day’s hard-copy edition.

Our first objective, following a close reading of the editor’s apology (for the full text, see Currie, 2014), was to identify any explicit ‘illocutionary force indicating devices’ (IFID). This term is used by applied linguistic researchers to describe the most obvious form of an apology, that is, the use of ‘routinized, formulaic expressions of regret’ involving performative verbs such as ‘sorry, apologize, regret or excuse’ (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984: 206). In examining the text of the New Zealand Herald apology, we found four examples of IFID using the word ‘apologise’ (our italics in the examples):

In the first instance, it is the New Zealand Herald as an organisation (and not just the editor) that performs the act of apologising and acknowledges the error by stating what occurred and where. The apology is not just to the family of Guy Boyland but to a wider circle of people that include his friends. The qualifying adverb ‘unreservedly’ after ‘apologises’ in the opening sentence intensifies the expression of regret. However, note that the apology is made ‘following’ the mistake, suggesting that the management had no involvement with what occurred but feels compelled to take action as a result. The abstract form of the news organisation as the initial conveyor of the apology personalises the organisation to imply a collective concern at every level, including the higher ranks of management. This is reinforced later in the apology when it states that the CEO of the New Zealand Herald’s then parent company, APN, had also spoken with the family.

The second example is not a performative apology (Lakoff, 2001), but rather it is now the editor reporting to readers that he has wasted no time in apologising to the family for the impact of the mistake, that is, for ‘adding to their grief’. This suggests that the editor is a sensitive and caring person who understands the family’s emotional upheaval at the loss of Guy, and that he is acknowledging the effect of the New Zealand Herald’s mistake on top of their stress in having to come to terms with this loss.

The third example is an IFID where the verb ‘to apologise’ reinforces both the New Zealand Herald’s and the editor’s need to continually show their recognition of the gravity of the situation. The words ‘we are taking’ indicates an ongoing concern for what has happened, which is also emphasised through the use of the words ‘reiterate’ and ‘apologise again’. The editor uses the first person pronoun ‘I’ to perform the apology, but employs the first person plural pronoun ‘we’ to indicate that the news organisation stands with him in responding to the error. Underlying this sentence is an apparent disbelief that such an error occurred to the extent that the apology must be repeated to save face.

In the fourth example, an IFID is apparent where the editor again uses the pronoun ‘I’ to apologise, but this time, it is to the readers – not for any harm or emotional fallout but for failing to meet their expectations in accurate reporting. The reference to ‘trust’ is an acknowledgement that the news organisation is aware of the damage the mistake has caused to its reputation.

The verb tense relating to these apologies is also interesting, in that it moves from the present tense with the New Zealand Herald making the apology to the past tense to indicate that the editor has already made an apology to the family. Then, in the third and fourth examples, ‘to apologise’ is preceded by the auxiliary verb ‘I would like …’, which functions as a form of politeness and infers a request for the New Zealand Herald’s apology to be accepted.

These four examples indicate the multiple ways in which the New Zealand Herald makes its apology in a situation where there has been a loss of face. It can be observed that the multiple apologies in the text offered by the New Zealand Herald and the editor (both separately and together) are made to different recipients, all of whom are important in this instance to the New Zealand Herald: Guy Boland’s family, his friends and the newspaper’s readers. At the same time, although the editor accepts responsibility for what had occurred (as required by his role), both he and the New Zealand Herald subtly distance themselves from having any prior knowledge about or direct involvement in the mistake. That is, apologies are made ‘following’ what occurred, for the error adding to the family’s grief, for allowing it to happen and for betraying the trust of its readers. To further explore this distancing approach, as well as the organisation’s attempt to restore its reputation and engage in paradigm repair, we examined four additional linguistic strategies that can be used to perform an apology (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984). These strategies all featured in the New Zealand Herald apology and are listed below, along with examples directly from the apology text:

Strategy 1: An explanation or account of the cause that brought about the offence

Sentences 7 & 8: ‘Guy Boyland was a fan of comedian Ryan Dunn and had posted the photo we used on his Facebook page when the comedian died in 2011. The New Zealand Herald incorrectly sourced the image of Ryan Dunn from Guy’s page, along with several other images, believing them to be of Guy’.

In these two sentences, the New Zealand Herald avoids blaming any particular staff member for making the mistake. Several images were collected from Facebook and the discourse suggests that they all looked similar. In fact there is an inference that the Facebook page gave the impression that the photograph was indeed of Boyland. While not blaming Boyland directly, there is an intimation that the New Zealand Herald may have been misled. This is made through the use of the verb ‘believe’ indicating their actions in the use of the wrong photograph were unintentional. At the same time, this infers some commentary about the use of social media as a source for information which the New Zealand Herald finds is not always reliable.

Strategy 2: An expression of the person’s responsibility for the offence

Sentence 2: ‘As Editor I take responsibility for the errors that should never have occurred’.

As indicated in our earlier analysis, the editor takes responsibility for the mistake regardless of who was involved. Accepting accountability is part of his role as editor, but he stresses that his position is one where he must express regret for an error caused by someone else who reports to him.

Strategy 3: An offer of repair

Sentence 6: ‘We are currently looking into what checks were made regarding the two images, with a view to ensuring procedures are reviewed to ensure that there is no repeat of this error in the future’.

While the repair of the error has already been completed in the posting and publication of the correct photograph, and in the making of the apology, a further offer to improve the situation is made to avoid future errors. However, there is vagueness in the New Zealand Herald’s expression of its actions as ‘looking into’ and ‘ensuring procedures are reviewed’, suggesting that it will take time to find out what happened and prevent its reoccurrence. This again distances the editor and the management from being party to the error.

Strategy 4: A promise of forbearance

Sentence 10: ‘… we must make sure that this does not happen again’.

Once again, the editor uses the pronoun ‘we’ along with an auxiliary verb ‘must’ to express a personal obligation by all within the news organisation to ensure that such an error is not repeated. Although this shifts the discourse away from any emphasis on blame, it is a promise of forbearance suggesting greater oversight of New Zealand Herald staff in the future. Convincing readers of the New Zealand Herald’s trustworthiness is also an essential part of its image restoration.

The reputation of the fourth estate has a rich history where there is ‘unquestionable normative doxa of objectivity and truth in their displayed journalistic practice’ (Kenix, 2016: 21, 22). The interweaving of these linguistic strategies in the apology can therefore be seen to construct a sincere act that demonstrates appropriate professional behaviour in taking responsibility and showing sensitivity in relation to a violation of a social norm (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984). Blaming any one person is avoided and by proceeding through a series of discursive moves (explain, accept, offer and promise), involving the collective ‘we’ (the editor and the news organisation), and emphasising the need for ‘public trust’, reduces the offence and its associated negativity by ‘humanising’ the New Zealand Herald and constructing it with a ‘moral persona’ (Kampf, 2009).

In reviewing the findings of the analysis of this apology relating to the IFIDs and the four linguistic strategies above (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984), we can see that the New Zealand Herald makes every effort to restore its image as a reputable news organisation. In this carefully crafted apology, there is an attempt at positive self-representation by the New Zealand Herald to meet public expectations as a responsible news organisation that is willing to admit its mistakes and make amends. It clearly suggests that this type of mistake is rare, yet, once made, requires an immediate response by way of an apology. While an initial private apology has clearly been made in person to Guy Boyland’s family, this additional written public apology is made in the interests of image restoration.

Overall, the linguistic strategies identified indicate an overt apology, including a more subtle attempt at boundary work by intimating the role of social media in daily reporting and its potential negative effect on journalistic practice, especially in pressurised circumstances. Similarities can be seen to Berkowitz and Liu’s (2016) findings in the Sandy Hook case in that paradigm repair is enacted by signalling the challenges that face journalists today in the digital world. In our case study, the apology moves the focus from apologising for the actual error (and any detailed explanation of how it occurred), to show the organisation suggesting that an incident such as this was neither usual practice nor acceptable for the New Zealand Herald. News organisations are powerful institutions. To lose face is to lose power – but the New Zealand Herald clearly decided that it was better to make a full apology before one was demanded of it, either by those affected or by the readers.

From a socio-cultural perspective, the act of an apology in response to a serious error or transgression by a public figure or an institution is an expectation of Western society. In fact, the news media themselves may often be responsible for encouraging such calls following their reporting or exposure of the misconduct of others. As Kampf (2009) comments, the realisation of an apology ‘not only conforms to the moral discursive standard of late and to the public’s expectations of its representatives, but can assist an apologizer [to] project a moral persona and reconstruct public trust’ (p. 2259). So it is not surprising that a powerful news organisation with a large readership might also be called upon to apologise in the case of the dissemination of misinformation. Certainly in the digital age when journalistic practice has become more transparent, the publicising of incorrect information can be damaging to the recipient as well as to the news organisation responsible.

Conclusion

This study enabled us to explore one particular case of an online apology where we could demonstrate what can happen when the sourcing of images from social media for a news story, already a contested area when it comes to the boundaries of journalistic practice, turns sour. The chance capture of the wrong photograph being sourced from a dead soldier’s Facebook page enabled us to investigate the public response to the error as well as to look at how a news organisation responded to the error by way of an apology, which it also disseminated via social media.

To answer our first research question, what were the circumstances in the newsroom that led to the publication of the wrong photograph sourced from Facebook for this lead story in the New Zealand Herald?, we ascertained through interviews with journalists that verification procedures were lacking at the New Zealand Herald, and we listed the chain of events. In reviewing these findings, we believe that if the reporter had spent more time studying the Facebook page, several elements would have alerted him to the possibility that at least one photograph in the site’s ‘profile picture’ section might not be of Mr Boyland. For example, if the reporter had clicked into the ‘profile’ images, there were comments against the photographs of Ryan Dunn that should have raised a red flag. While the comments were in Hebrew, they could be translated by clicking ‘see translation’. Mr Boyland’s sister Kim writes: ‘Yeah!! But he looks better than you ☺’, which implies that she is communicating to her brother about the photograph, and the ‘he’ mentioned is obviously not her brother. The other comments about the photograph were posted on 3 February 2014, several months before Guy Boyland’s death, and appear to refer to Ryan Dunn’s death in 2011. The term ‘RIP’ against one photograph is internationally understood. In addition, a very simple check that can be carried out on any photo on Facebook is to right click over the image and choose the option ‘search Google for this image’. It would have been very quick to find out that the image was of Jackass’s Ryan Dunn and not Guy Boyland. For these basic checks that require no specialist knowledge not to have happened shows the pressure of time under which reporters are working.

To answer our second research question, what was the public response to the New Zealand Herald’s mistake?, our review of a sample of online comments in social media and by other media organisations highlighted the damage to the New Zealand Herald’s reputation. The majority of the comments were negative, and we established a pattern whereby the discussion transformed from disbelief about the error to a questioning of journalistic practice and what was going on in the New Zealand Herald newsroom, and finally to anger that the New Zealand Herald allowed the mistake to happen. Our research showed how the rise of online platforms provided opportunities for further dissemination of a news organisation’s error and discussion through which more damage could occur to the New Zealand Herald’s reputation. Yet at the same time, we found that the New Zealand Herald purposely used social media to convey its apology for image restoration and paradigm repair.

To address our third research question, what linguistic strategies did the New Zealand Herald use to restore its image through its online apology to the dead soldier, Guy Boyland’s, family and its readers? we drew on the field of applied linguistics. We found that numerous linguistic strategies were employed in the text with the inclusion of IFIDs and, in particular, the use of performative verbs of regret that indicate the act of an apology. There was some attempt at explanation; however, this lacked clarity and appeared to move the objective of the apology to paradigm repair, as well as pointed to the use of social media content by journalists as problematic. A promise was made in the apology that further investigation about the mistake would be carried out, and that this would result in newsroom processes that would ensure such an incident would not occur again. Although the editor’s name appeared as the author of the apology, it was clear that the wider organisation of the New Zealand Herald had a dominant ‘voice’ in the text and that it, too, was implicit in the act of apologising for what occurred. The online apology, in fact, can be seen as a vehicle to maintain the power of the news institution through first, image restoration and the placing of itself within journalistic boundaries as a responsible news organisation, and second to engage with paradigm repair by signalling the challenges to journalistic practice, especially the use of the internet for sourcing information.

Using CDA, we analysed the apology in the context of journalistic practice and the wider societal attitudes and expectations about the news media. Ultimately, our research shows that the digital age not only continues to be a challenge for journalists working under pressure but also suggests that there are larger issues for news organisations as institutions seek to maintain their positions of power and retain their image as credible and trustworthy organisations in a more transparent environment. Increasingly, news organisations are moving the boundaries of acceptable practice, particularly when covering breaking news where material to illustrate events is difficult to come by in the traditional manner (Kenix, 2016). While we suggest further research is desirable to follow the media’s transformation in the digital age and how it responds to the challenges that journalists encounter, we also recommend that appropriate verification procedures when sourcing information from social media should be an essential part of journalistic training as news organisations come to grips with the pros and cons of digital platforms.