Instead of hoping no one would notice, the Times investigated itself and gave the report prominent play, ensuring it would be picked up by the rest of the howling press pack. Why the public self-flagellation?
Because good media managers know in their bones that success ultimately depends upon the reliability and quality of the content they produce.
When it's undermined, the best damage control was to confess the screw-ups forthrightly and try to assure readers they would not be repeated.
You wouldn't think the media needed the occasional fiasco to remind them that quality control is crucial and content is king - but they do.
During the dotcom bubble, for example, the entire industry lost its focus, putting more emphasis on a fashionable delivery vehicle - the internet - than on the inherent value of the information the technology was supposed to deliver. Billions of dollars were wasted because everyone forgot it is the stories we tell that matter, not the method of the telling.
Publishers spend plenty of energy on clever promotion and packaging as they go about building brands and gaining mind share. But no matter how sophisticated, marketing exercises are doomed to fail if all they do is call attention to inferior, predictable content.
Bad journalism provides its own punishment. Good, aggressive journalism offers its own rewards. Consider how the media has handled coverage of the Sars epidemic. While the number of people killed by the disease to date is less than the death toll of a couple of Bangladesh ferry accidents, the shrill headlines and sheer volume of reports suggest a global cataclysm is underway. Is the abundant coverage a case of the media hysterically hyping a not-so-deadly disease?
Hardly. Sars has the key ingredients for a global pandemic. Taking it lightly was not an option. Time Asia (the magazine I work for) dedicated a lot of resources to Sars reporting. It paid off. Our Beijing bureau broke the news that officials in China were hiding the number of Sars victims. Had the deception continued, the disease could have gained an even larger foothold in a population that was kept dangerously uninformed.
In this instance, the media did its job by sounding the alarm and putting the world on guard. Being the bearer of bad tidings may not win advertisers.
But telling people the truth about important stories they care about builds a reputation for dependability. It builds trust. As New York Times editors can attest, that's an asset that should never be taken for granted.