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3.) What are the error rates across small, medium, and large markets?4.) What do sources regard as the likely causes of the errors noted?5.) What type of contact did the source have with reporters and/or producers?6.) What are the sources media use habits?The questionnaire largely replicated the original Singletary/Lipsky questions, andadded a few new ones related to the current set of research questions. This allowedboth for new areas of inquiry and time-based comparisons to the original findings.The data were entered into the statistical program SPSS for analysis of results. Theresults offered not only descriptive statistics on the types of errors noted but alsocorrelations between the type and length of contact with reporters/producers (andsource attitudes and characteristics) and the type/number of inaccuracies reported bythat source.RESULTSA total of 214 questionnaires were sent out to 180 unduplicated names. In somecommunities it was impossible to determine which of two people with common nameswas the source. Nineteen surveys were returned for insufficient addresses or unknownaddressees. Four people used the reply envelope to send back the material and to statewe had reached the wrong person. In all, 50 useful questionnaires were returned for aresponse rate of 27.8 percent. Very few respondents noted serious accuracy problems inthe stories quoting them.1. As reviewed by news sources, how common are [objectively defined] errors in localtelevision newscasts?Question one was structured as a Likert scale and asked if the story was factuallycorrect. Overwhelmingly, 98 percent (n=49) of the respondents reported that thestories were either entirely or generally correct. 68 percent reported the stories wereentirely correct and 30 percent reported the stories to be generally correct. Only onerespondent indicated the story was generally incorrect (see Table 1).Table 1. Correctness of StoryFrequency Percent Valid PercentEntirely correct 34 68.0 68.0Generally correct 15 30.0 30.0Generally incorrect 1 2.0 2.0Total 50 100.0 100.0Respondents who reported the stories not to be entirely correct (32 percent of allsurveyed) then were asked the number of errors noticed in the stories that werereported not entirely correct. The number of mistakes in these stories ranged from zeroto five. Interestingly, 80 percent of those surveyed reported no actual mistakes in thestories. One mistake was reported by 10 percent (n=5) of the respondents, 4 percentreported two mistakes, 4 percent also reported four mistakes, and only 2 percent (n=1)reported five mistakes in a story.BEA—Educating tomorrow’s electronic media professionals 49