TMZ and Jackson coverage: An article in Friday’s Section A about how gossip website TMZ scooped the mainstream media, including the Los Angeles Times, on the news of Michael Jackson’s death said The Times bannered the news on its website at 2:51 p.m. Thursday. In fact, the home-page banner went up at approximately 3:15 p.m. Link
Thanks, Rick!
An article entitled "When bankruptcy trustees ‘run amok,’ " published on page B6 of the June 24, 2009, edition of The Globe and Mail, contained a statement that judicial officials have ruled that Mr. Edward White, who is a licensed trustee in bankruptcy, "lied to regulators." That is incorrect. A statement to that effect was made by a Registrar in Bankruptcy. No other judicial official has made any such statement. The Registrar’s statement was specifically disapproved by Justice Ruth E. Mesbur of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Mr. White’s appeal of the Registrar’s decision. Justice Mesbur also reversed the decision of the Registrar on several other issues. Her decision is under appeal by Mr. Robert Murphy, who was quoted at length in our June 24 article. The Globe and Mail regrets its error and apologizes to Mr. White. Link
I can’t vouch for when this appeared in the Argus Observer, but it appears to be a legit scan of a correction:
Thanks, David and Criggo.com!
Our critic mistakenly said that an ice age "marked the death of the dinosaurs," rather than their advent. In fact, neither is true. The text of the review has been updated. Link
*Correction July 3: Speaking of failure, the word "Jurassic" was misspelled in this headline. It has been corrected. Thanks, Kate!
A story Sunday about a casting call for the game show "Deal or No Deal" in East Hanover erroneously stated that Kathy Shasa, of Rockaway, named her son Duncan because of her love of Dunkin’ Donuts. It was actually her cat that was named Duncan. Shasa’s last name was also misspelled as "Shaysa."
A news brief reported that a California couple arrived home to find a bear eating a 2lb box of chocolates purloined from their fridge. A sheriff’s sergeant added that the bear had also tried without success to open a bottle of champagne. Our headline – Bear necessity: couple catch chocaholic grizzly, 30 June, page 17 – was wrong, as wild grizzlies have not existed in California for decades. (And our style is chocoholic.) A reader adds: "A grizzly would have no problem opening a bottle of champagne; they can tear a door off a car." Link
By John E. McIntyre
A reader of my column on how publications deal with corrections (“Daddy, where do corrections come from?") addressed a point that regularly bedevils editors: Should corrections identify who made the error?
The issue has been described at some length in the article “Who takes the fall for errors?” by Kathy English, the public editor of the Toronto Star. Let me summarize the two main perspectives on the issue.
Point A: The impersonal correction, favored by many publications, considers a published article to be a collaborative effort for which the publication takes full responsibility without fixing blame. A given article may go through many hands, and error can occur at any point. It is the publication’s fault if such errors are not identified and corrected.
Point B: The contrary view, which received support in comments on Ms. English’s article, is that because the reporter’s byline is on the story, the reporter should not be embarrassed by being made to appear responsible for an error committed by someone else.
I am a sturdy advocate of the impersonal correction, which I justify for the following reasons.
Item: The story is the publication’s, not the author’s. Put it this way. Should the subject of an article sue for libel, the writer expects the publication to assume responsibility for the defense. No reporter wants to hear an editor say, “I see you have a problem with your story. You had better get yourself a lawyer.”
Item: The story is in fact a collective product of the publication’s staff. Publications employ originating editors and copy editors, all of whom have the authority and responsibility to make necessary changes.
Item: Bylines are more important to reporters than to readers. (That is why an eight-line brief rewritten from a press release will appear in print with a reporter’s credit at the end.) A reader may register the name of a columnist, or a reporter whose beat impinges on that reader’s particular interests, but there is little reason to think that readers take regular notice of who wrote which story.
There is thus little or no reason to think that readers care who makes mistakes of fact or that readers would benefit from reading corrections that assign such responsibility. An article in yesterday’s edition of the Blat mistakenly located the battle of Antietam as having taken place near Hagerstown, Maryland, instead of Sharpsburg. The writer’s text was correct, but the error was introduced by an intern on the copy desk. The Blat regrets the error.
The reader cares whether the publication is reliable.
Item: A typical comment on Ms. English’s article: The problem in this case is that the reporter has his or her name clearly listed as writer. If THAT writer was NOT responsible, THAT fact should be noted. The reading public will always associate the article with the writer, no matter how many people are working in the background. It is only fair to exonerate the writer from blame in these cases.
Let’s turn this one around. Should a reporter enjoy a reputation for accuracy that is the product of the editing process rather than the reporter’s own work? I have seen text from reporters, passed along by originating editors, with errors that would make your hair stand on end. (I once saw a story sent to the copy desk in which the reporter had misspelled the name of its subject sixteen times; that all sixteen were consistently misspelled was thought to mark an improvement in the reporter’s abilities.)
Anonymous copy editors, at the publications that still bother to engage copy editors, silently correct multitudes of errors. Envision this “shirttail” at the end of an article: The writer of this article identified Ougadougou as the capital of Dahomey. It is the capital of Burkina Faso. A Blat copy editor corrected the error.
Fixing responsibility is useful in-house for evaluating the performance of writers and editors. Its utility for the reading public is questionable.
Item: The exception: When a publication must acknowledge the commission of a plagiarism or a fabrication — the product of professional misconduct rather than ordinary carelessness or haste — the miscreant should be identified.
John McIntyre, former head of the copy desk at The Baltimore Sun, is the author of You Don’t Say, a blog on language, usage and miscellaneous topics.
In a television review published on 21 April of a programme entitled The Tattie Howkers, which dealt with issues surrounding migrant agricultural workers, we stated: "There are still agricultural workers coming to Scotland from countries such as Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. They’re brought over by recruitment bosses such as Bernard Gaughan – grandson of Irish field workers, son of a ganger. Perhaps they’re not sleeping in cowsheds, but they too slip under the radar for most of us." We would like to make it clear Mr Gaughan has never brought workers into the UK, that his company, Total Labour Solutions, operates under the strict licensing laws of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and that Mr Gaughan has campaigned to improve the rights of workers in this sector. We apologise for the error.
YouTube recently unveiled its Reporters’ Center, a library of videos offering advice about a variety of aspects of journalism. "The YouTube Reporters’ Center is a new resource to help you learn more about how to report the news," according to the site. "It features some of the nation’s top journalists and news organizations sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting."
One of the videos features the editor of PolitiFact offering some good, basic advice about fact checking.
In a story June 26, The Associated Press reported that frustrated fishermen are firing guns at bottlenose dolphins that have become increasingly aggressive in taking fish off hooks, and some dolphins have been wounded or killed. The story quoted Bob Zales, president of the National Association of Charter Boat Operators, as saying he heard accounts of dolphins being shot at. He says he meant that some boat operators "may fire weapons in an attempt to scare them off" but does not know of anyone who would fire at a dolphin or try to harm them. He said attempts to scare away dolphins have been made by commercial fishermen and others, not just charter boat fishermen.
A June 26 story about how sales of Michael Jackson merchandise could get a boost after his death incorrectly listed musician Chuck Berry as deceased. Chuck Berry, 82, is still alive and touring.
Bikie death: "Rebel Rick" Roberts’ death in Canberra in March was the result of a domestic dispute and not, as we wrongly wrote, part of a wave of apparent revenge attacks following a brawl between bikies at Sydney Airport (Bikie world pulls in viewers, Agenda, page 62, June 27).
The Night Out column last Sunday, about the actress Betty White, misstated the name of the television show on which she played beer pong with the host. It was “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” not “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Link
AN article in yesterday’s Geelong Advertiser incorrectly reported that Cindy Gambino overdosed on analgesics in an attempt to commit suicide. The Geelong Advertiser has been assured by Ms Gambino that at no stage did she consider harming herself. The Geelong Advertiser sincerely apologises for the error and for any distress it may have caused.
A report from the JTA:
Australia’s national public broadcaster has apologized for a report that claimed Israel’s security fence was ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court.
The Australian Broadcasting Corp. apologized Wednesday to a Jewish lobby group and corrected an April 25 report which stated that “both the International Court of Justice and Israel’s Supreme Court have ruled that the West Bank wall is illegal and must be pulled down.” …
In a letter to the affairs council this week, Australian Broadcasting Corp. representative Kieran Doyle apologized for "this lapse in editorial standards." He advised that an editor’s note had been attached to the online transcript of the report noting the error, and that the matter also has been posted on the corrections page of ABC News…
Thanks, Steve!
In the Cover Story on Sasol (June 19), it was stated that senior executive Riaan Rademan had been suspended and was facing disciplinary proceedings. This is not true in any respect. We apologise to Rademan and Sasol for the mistake.
AN ARTICLE entitled "Charged for giving his kids’ mum AIDS" was published on May 19, 2008 concerning Mr Brian Montgomery. The article was incorrectly accompanied by a photograph of Mr Mark Ryan. The Daily Telegraph apologises unreservedly for any embarrassment or hurt to feelings suffered by Mr Ryan as a result of the publication.
The headline on our obituary of Charlie Mariano yesterday, page 30, wrongly referred to the American-born saxophonist and nadaswaram player as a "globe-trotting jazz trumpeter". Link
The new book from Wired editor and bestselling author Chris Anderson contains multiple passages lifted from Wikipedia. The examples of plagiarism were discovered by a reviewer for the Virginia Quarterly Review and Anderson admits that he failed to properly attribute the text. Here’s how he explained himself:
As some of you may have seen, VQR rightly spotted that I failed to cite Wikipedia in some passages in Free. This is entirely my own screwup, and will be corrected in the ebook and digital forms before publication (and in the notes, which will be posted online at the same time the hardcover is released), but I did want to explain a bit more how it happened and what we’re doing about it…
In my drafts, I had intended to blockquote Wikipedia passages, footnoting their URL. But my publisher, like many others, was uncomfortable with the changing nature of Wikipedia, and wanted me to timestamp each URL (something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Anderson page viewed on July 8th, 2008), which struck me as clumsy and archaic. So at the 11th hour we decided to kill the notes and footnotes entirely and I integrated the attributions into the copy.
In doing so, I went through the document and redid all the attributions, in three groups:
Long passages of direct quotes (indent, with source)
Intellectual debts, phrases and other credit due (author credited inline, as with Michael Pollan)
In the case of source material without an individual author to credit (as in the case of Wikipedia), do a write-through.
Obviously in my rush at the end I missed a few of that last category, which is bad. As you’ll note, these are mostly on the margins of the book’s focus, mostly on historical asides, but that’s no excuse. I should have had a better process to make sure the write-through covered all the text that was not directly sourced…
Edward Champion has weighed in and suggests that Anderson’s transgressions extend beyond what was discovered by VQR. But others, including Anderson’s publisher, have accepted his explanation.
FishbowlNY managed to track down Waldo Jaquith, the VQR reviewer, and get him to explain how he discovered the Wikipedia passages:
For Jaquith, it all started with a parenthetical. During the passage from "Free" in which Anderson describes the saying "There’s no such thing as a free lunch," Jaquith noticed that something was amiss. "It mentioned Crescent City and then, parenthetically, said New Orleans," he said. "At first, I was thrown off. I thought that maybe that before it was called New Orleans it was called Crescent City and I was mad at myself for not knowing that."
The reference needled at Jaquith so he did some research. His first stop: Wikipedia. To his surprise, the Wikipedia entry for New Orleans only mentioned Crescent City as a nickname. So he Googled the citation just as Anderson had written it in his book. That’s how he found an entry for explaining free lunch on Wikipedia.
Kris DeRego, the news editor at Ka Leo, the student paper at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, has been fired after the paper looked through his previous work and found a trail of fabricated sources and factual errors. From the paper’s report:
In a review of all stories written for Ka Leo between January 2008 and May 2009, the newspaper was unable to identify the existence of 29 people who were quoted by Ka Leo’s previous news editor as students at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
Ka Leo’s professional staff was unable to find UH records for 21 of the people quoted in the newspaper. For eight other names, there were students with same or similar names, but they were not enrolled as students at the time they were quoted. In conversations with editors, the reporter said some of the errors resulted from poor handwriting, stress, and errors caused by the copy desk.
The reporter is no longer working at Ka Leo. Ka Leo will continue to strive to make sure that everything printed in the newspaper is a fact. All reporters will be asked to provide email addresses and phone numbers of sources quoted in Ka Leo to improve accuracy.
It then goes on to list the errors and fabrications. This report also details another part of DeRego’s past:
If DeRego looks familiar it’s because he’s made headlines before. It was another newspaper story about him that tanked his 2006 candidacy for the Board of Education.
In the weeks before the election, the Star Bulletin reported accusations against DeRego of sexual abuse and theft. A former employer said he stole $8,000 mostly in liquor. Another newspaper that endorsed him for the BOE seat withdrew the endorsement and DeRego lost the electon.
Thanks to Anne and Romenesko.
UPDATE June 26: DeRego tells the Honolulu Advertiser that he didn’t fabricate quotes or sources:
Kris DeRego, in a written statement, said his stories were "adulterated during the copy (editing) process — a problem encountered by other staff members working at Ka Leo." …
"While I’ve certainly made mistakes as a reporter, I never intentionally misattributed quotes or attempted to mislead the paper’s readership," DeRego said. "To the contrary, I worked diligently on each of my stories, putting in extra time and effort to ensure that my work reflected the highest standards of professionalism and elevated the overall quality of the publication."
Because of a reporter’s error, Bill Husted’s column on Page 3B on Sunday contained an item about a tombstone for "Elway the Drug Sniffing Dog." The tombstone was digitally fabricated for a blog and does not exist. Link
Correction: Because of incomplete information supplied by the city, an item in Thursday’s "g" erroneously reported that admission to tomorrow’s Rose Garden Party at the Kelleher Rose Garden is free. Tickets are $125.
An article about career-coaching company Career By Choice ("Roman Payday," June) contained the following errors: The company is three years old, not two; its 2008 revenue was 56,000 euros, not 70,000 euros; client Brian Rothbart launched a lecture DVD, not an online lecture series; and client Tony Piccolo works in information management at the U.N., not in information services, and is not organizing a conference on biofuels. FSB regrets the errors.
In a June 15 story about DF Indie Studios, The Associated Press reported erroneous claims by the company and founders Mary Dickinson and Charlene Fisher. In a news release and in interviews, DF Indie Studios and the founders said their movies will be produced by such Hollywood figures as Ridley and Tony Scott. Dickinson and Fisher also said they had $300 million in loans and distribution deals and were halfway to raising $100 million in equity. However, DF Indie Studios now acknowledges that it has not finalized its line of credit, its equity investments or all of its distribution deals. And a representative for the Scotts’ production company says it has no business or contractual relationship with DF Indie Studios. Link
In today’s paper a reference to the wealth of Windsor Conservative MP Adam Afriyie was based on an email from his chief of staff, Russell Walters. Mr Walters has now told us he made a mistake in mentioning figures without discussing it with Mr Afriyie beforehand, for which he has now apologised to Mr Afriyie. Therefore, there was no "immodesty" on Mr Afriyie’s part. In addition, we are happy to make it clear that Mr Afriyie is not amongst those shadow ministers who are giving up external paid positions in advance of the disclosure deadline of 1 July. Mr Afriyie does not have any paid occupation outside the House of Commons. Link
