Even (especially) journalists can get it very wrong

"Check your sources" is surely something the French journalist Florence Schaal must have wished she had done before making the headlines for all the wrong reasons last month here in France.

It happened when she reported the death of a two-year-old boy on August 8, who had been the subject of a police search since he had gone missing a day earlier in the village of Verclause in Drôme in the south of France.

Towards the end of the prime time news on the country's major private channel, TF1, Schaal reported that he had in fact been found dead.

Except he hadn't. And instead was alive and well, and back with his parents.

TF1 was forced to run a retraction of the story in the programme immediately following the news.

Not surprisingly the mistake had its repercussions. The Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA) the independent regulatory body in France for television and radio (the equivalent to the Federal Communications Commission in the United States) stepped in to tell TF1 off.

And in the meantime the media went into a complete self-absorbed frenzy trying to work out how such an embarrassing error could have been aired - live - on television.

Schaal was after all not an inexperienced journalist - far from it. The 58-year-old had 32 years with TF1 under her belt. She was a seasoned reporter.

According to the weekly news magazine, Le Point, the journalist had based her report on "vague statements from a fireman" who had said, "it's over" and that was enough for Schaal to go on air concluding that the search had ended because the boy had been found dead.

The week immediately following the debacle, the weekly satirical Le Canard enchaîné reported that TF1 was on the point of sacking Schaal, and it didn't take the rest of the French media very long to jump in and start confusing an already muddled story.

There was going to be disciplinary action before a tribunal according to the French daily, Le Figaro. "She could be fired," announced the weekly news magazine Nouvel Observateur, which had in turn based its report on Le Canard enchaîné's.

To its credit, Nouvel Observateur did in fact contact TF1 directly at the time to check out the story, and the channel responded that a disciplinary meeting hadn't yet taken place and no action had been taken.

And so the rumour mill based on little substance and an awful lot of cross-reporting on what had appeared in other newspapers and magazines carried on.

Then last week that public reprimand from the CSA, when TF1 boss Nonce Paolini, and its director of information Jean-Claude Dassier were hauled in for explanations.

The result was not an absolution for Schaal - far from it - but a public taking to task for TF1 and its news output for failing to "comply with the regulation to respect the honesty of the news it put on the channel."

In other words, a telling off for those higher up in the hierarchy.

There had apparently been some sort of technical glitch between TF1's HQ back in Paris and Schaal, who was the special reporter in the area sent to cover the story, so one apparently didn't hear the other, and she was put on air to announce the news "that wasn't" without anyone on the news team having double checked.

In an interview after the CSA's findings Schall told the website of the weekly television magazine, Teleloisirs, that she regretted what had happened but welcomed the pronouncement.

"I'm sad for my channel that it was subjected to a public reprimand from the CSA, "she said.

"But I'm also relieved that the circumstances of what actually happened on August 8 have also now been made public."

While much of the media has continued to chase its tail in an attempt to be report what hadn't happened, some dailies preferred to take a more sober approach and actually only report the story as it unfolded.

Both Libération and Le Monde for example, stayed as true to the facts as possible, just last week reporting on the outcome of the CSA-TF1 meeting, and they are still holding out on the result of Schaal's disciplinary meeting until her bosses make a formal announcement.

Just for the record, Schaal has taken "extended leave" and has met with her bosses and union officials, but a statement has yet to be made about her future by TF1.

Somewhere in all of this there's a lesson, but perhaps none more so than those words "check your sources."