WHAT’S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

The Times of London reports on the El Pais scoop about what many of us suspected: there was no engine on fire.

As I said here and here yesterday:

Why does everybody accept that one of the engines caught fire if nobody is able to report the identity of the sources?

Can you tell me who — when and where — saw that the left engine of the SAS Spanair was on fire?
Where are all these witnesses?

Video footage of the air crash at Barajas airport in Madrid does not show any engine explosion as the Spanair aircraft attempted to take off.

Witnesses had reported seeing a fire erupting in the left engine as the MD82 was approaching the end of the runway, which was thought to have been a factor in a disaster that killed 153 people.

After seeing footage taken by the Spanish airport authority, AENA, Spain’s civil aviation chief said that more than one failure likely caused the crash. Manuel Bautista, the Civil Aviation Director General, was quoted by El Pais as saying that the aircraft could not have crashed just because of trouble in one of the engines.

“A fault in a motor does not cause an accident,” he said. “Together with other causes it could be what brought down the plane. We have to determine the combination of causes that contributed to it.

The video shows flight JK5022 advancing down the runway and climbing several metres before falling and hitting the tarmac. It then careens off the runway to the right.

The aircraft exploded only some seconds after hitting the ground, sources close to the investigation told El Pais. Sparks from the friction had ignited the plane’s fuel, they said, and the tragedy was inevitable.

Here you can see a corrected version of a previous animated graphic, with no engine on fire.

What this scoop shows is that instant coverage of news like this needs real reporting more than speed.

You don’t report in front of a computer screen.

(”Garbage in, garbage out”)

You have to be there.

Make telephone calls.

Interview people.

Double-check facts.

Listen to both sides.

And be careful.

With numbers.

Names.

And data.

In just two words: do journalism.

And this is a hard lesson for visual journalists, too:

Facts are more important than imagination.

Congratulations to El Pais!