Rieder: TV news should have on-air fact-checkers

• Correcting mistakes in real time would shore up credibility
• ESPN%27s Pardon the Interruption pioneered the practice
• It%27s time for news programs to adopt the practice

You don't usually think of ESPN's Tony Kornheiser as a journalism ethics sage.

A font of sports one-liners, sure. An adviser on ways to improve news outlets' accountability, not so much.

But the co-host of Pardon the Interruption is on to something with his suggestion that TV newscasts "steal" an idea from PTI and employ fact-checkers to call them out on their mistakes. On air and in real time, no less.

Kornheiser issued the challenge to his more serious TV colleagues during a segment of CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday showcasing PTI's very own fact-checker, Tony Reali. And I'd say Kornheiser is on to something.

Television has never been very good at pointing out its errors. Newspapers generally have corrections sections. Many news websites will not only correct mistakes in copy, they will also note that the original version was incorrect. But TV news has been a laggard when it comes to setting the record straight.

And the idea of pointing out the mistakes on the program where they took place is perfect for the digital age. While newspapers have to wait until the following day to run their corrections, websites can and should fix mistakes as soon as they're discovered.

As Kornheiser says, "If you get something wrong, you ought to correct it right on the spot." After all, if you don't , others will. When news outlets make mistakes, particularly on high-profile stories, you can be sure that many readers and viewers will take to Twitter to point them out.

Sure, it's embarrassing to be wrong. But mistakes are built into the business. As a wonderful boss of mine named Peter Binzen was apt to point out, "Journalism is a very inexact science." That's particularly true in the warp-speed digital era. If you own up to your missteps quickly and unequivocally, readers and viewers are more likely to cut you some slack. It's not only the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do.

And the timing seems perfect. It was just a week ago that CBS News and NBC News fingered the wrong man as the gunman in the carnage at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. Both networks quickly retreated on their awful mistake. But it would be great to institutionalize the practice for miscues large and small.

Margaret Sullivan, The New York Times' public editor, has done an excellent job of showing the value of dealing promptly with controversies involving the paper. In the past, Times public editors would write columns for the print product every couple of weeks, and that would be that.

Sullivan has continued that practice but, more significantly, has weighed in rapidly on the flap du jour on nytimes.com. For example, when the paper published an op-ed column by Russia President Vladimir Putin earlier this month, predictably stirring up controversy, Sullivan addressed the issue on the day the column appeared in print, which was Sept. 11.

That's a model for how news organizations should respond.

So how did PTI end up with a fact-checker? In an interview with Reliable Sources guest host David Folkenflik, NPR's media maven, Kornheiser said that he and co-host Michael Wilbon were newspaper guys who were used to corrections.

When they launched the show 12 years ago, he and his longtime Washington Post colleague knew they were apt to get some things wrong in their fast-paced back-and-forth on the sports issues of the day. And they felt they couldn't wait until the next day to straighten things out.

Reali, the show's designated "self-correction mechanism," is such an integral part of the team that when Kornheiser and Wilbon visited President Obama in the White House in July, Reali was right there with them.

So come on, Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer and Scott Pelley. Step up and add a fact-checker to the mix. It's the right move.