Regret the Error

The Washington Times is doing its best to start a pulp catfight over an error made by The Washington Post. The story and its resulting Page One headline in The Post on October 7, “incorrectly attributed a quotation to Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. The statement, “We were almost all wrong,” was made by Duelfer’s predecessor, David Kay, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Jan. 28,” according to the correction The Post ran.

The next day The Times ran a story to rub salt in the wound, and then it named The Post headline writer as its “knave” of the week for “allowing bias to cloud judgment.” In the midst of its gloating the Times also made an interesting statement when it reprinted the correction notice from The Post by saying, “…unfortunately, corrections often go unnoticed.” So true, especially when your corrections page remains blank for several weeks as The Times’ has.

This Post mistake has, however, raised an interesting question: should an error on the front page require a front page correction? Matthew Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs, says yes. “Mistakes on other pages can rightly be corrected on Page A2,” he told The Times, saying that front page mistakes require front page corrections.

While we wait patiently for that to happen, have a look at all the other stories from around the world that are carrying the misattributed quote. We’ll give some props to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for stepping up and running a correction. But it looks like hardly anyone else has corrected the error, let alone run a front page notice…

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