I was making the point that in the case of Darfur, inaccurate stories do not occur randomly as the result purely of tight deadlines or cuts in journalism, as you had argued, but tend to operate in one direction – usually marking a failure of the reporter to scrutinise one side of the argument rather than the other. In this case, claims made by IDPs, their representatives or the Darfur rebels are often accepted in a way that claims made by the Khartoum government never would be.

I chose an example that I knew you would be familiar with and one that I was also familiar with, as I had subjected the claims of the UN report to rather greater scrutiny than you had. In my research I spoke to several aid workers and UN officials who all told me they were familiar with reports that “foreigners” were moving on to land recently vacated under pressure from the Janjaweed and/or government troops. However, none had actually laid eyes on these foreigners, or could tell me of any colleagues who had. One also pointed out that many Arab tribes with their roots outside Darfur are often referred to as “foreigners” despite having been in the country for generations. Given that the UN report you quoted reported “reports” rather than hard evidence, I figured the story needed more detail before I was prepared to run it.

One of my former editors was found of shooting down stories in conference with a scathing: “Well, that might be what they say, but is it true?”

Newspapers are full of people saying things which are not true. On some occasions these stories are acceptable on the basis of who the person is that is saying these things. Other times – and I’d argue this is one – we have a responsibility to check that the reports are true or likely to be true.

Simply getting confirmation that such reports exist, or that more than one person has heard the same rumour, is not enough.

In the case of Darfur, unfair reporting of the Arab tribes is one of the features that is holding back the chance of peace. I have made the same error in the past but am trying to address the issue in order to improve my reporting.