Check Everything!

Mistakes are inevitable

Thanks to my mum, Sarah Cocke, for the photo!

When I was a boy, I used to amuse myself by making my own newspapers, as you can see in the photo above. Later, when I was a teenager, I started reading The Guardian cover to cover on a regular basis. After studying philosophy at university, I moved to Madrid with a backpack and a little cash and spent three years teaching English and learning Spanish. During this time, I dipped my feet into research in a small way by updating guidebooks and writing a fanzine. I remember meeting a friend of a friend, who worked as a reporter for The Guardian. He told me that most foreign correspondents had begun their careers as English language teachers, which I hadn’t realized. I decided to become a journalist; and - after several adventures backpacking around the Americas - I moved to London and did an intensive course.

At the end of the journalism course, I managed to get a reporting job at the last publication on my target list. Several months later, I got my big break. An international newswire advertised a reporting job in The Guardian. The name of the lady in human resources appeared to be spelt wrong. Around 200 people applied, but I was the only one to call and check the spelling. It was wrong and I was in! I started my first job in international media in January 1996 at the age of 25 and became a foreign correspondent by the time I was 27.

Twenty-five years after getting my big break, I still work full-time as a news reporter, specializing in breaking news about Spanish finance and business behind a paywall. After spending a quarter of a century as a reporter with international media, I would like to share a hard lesson with you: Mistakes are inevitable! Typos have a way of sneaking their way past the toughest editors. What you think you heard might not be exactly the same as what the other person meant. It is notoriously easy to get names wrong. It is for this reason that working for a long time in the media encourages journalists to develop a very watchful attitude. Did you copy and paste a name instead of writing it down? Did you double-check a job title? Can you get another pair of eyes on the copy before you send it to the world? Do you really understand what you are writing? If someone spots a mistake after publication, is there a process to get it fixed afterwards?

While this watchful attitude is very common in the more serious corners of the media (perhaps more so in news than in commentary), it isn’t necessarily quite so widespread elsewhere. When its absence leads non-journalists to share questionable content on social media without checking first, it can trigger cognitive dissonance in journalists. While I now realize that being abrasive on social media is counter-productive, this was a long time coming. I would like to publicly apologize to any friends who have been offended when I have pushed back or been argumentative on social media. Sorry!

Once you realize that mistakes are inevitable, it is easy to develop a watchful attitude to sharing content even if you don’t work for the media. Have you checked the date? If the article quotes another source, have you followed the links backwards? Is the link from a website that defends fringe views? Or some kind of guru? Or conspiratorial anti-globalists? Has the information appeared on several news sources? It helps to consider your own biases. We have seen that our first guesses will probably be wrong, that trying to work out the causes of events can be problematic and that buying into sweeping conspiracy theories can be bad for your health.

The Sharpen Your Axe project is based on helping amateur researchers to do better in their quest to understand the world. I want to encourage ordinary people to develop a probabalistic approach, where we hold our views lightly and adjust them up and down based on the evidence. Respecting real-world results is the cornerstone of this approach; and well-considered bets can help us test whether or not contrarianism is appropriate.

This week, I would like to share the bibliography of Sharpen Your Axe, my free book on thinking critically about current affairs. The link also includes a glossary, an appendix on Bayesian statistics and the acknowledgements. Cross-referencing the chapters against the bibliography can help you probe my work. Some friends have already kindly pointed out a couple of typos in early chapters. I appreciate it! If anyone sees any typos, please let me know at sharpenyouraxe at substack.com! Also, if you have enjoyed the book and would like to contribute a few words for the final version, it would be greatly appreciated.

If you missed the beginning, here are the links to Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17 and Chapter 18. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but I decided to make this information free so that it could spread widely. If you could help me out with a share, it would be fantastic. See you next week!

Update (25 April 2021)

The full beta version is available here

[Updated on 10 March 2022] Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.