Let’s just say it: This was a very bad year.
That’s the inevitable conclusion after just a few minutes spent reviewing this year’s long list of errors, corrections and plagiarists. But it’s about more than just quantity. What jumps out is that this was a year during which we witnessed the astounding consequences of media errors.
It was the year that Newsweek’s Koran error played a role in deadly riots, the year a Fox News commentator’s error caused a family to be terrorized by its neighbors, the year the Chicago Tribune was sued for $1 million for mistakenly labeling a man a mobster (it did the same to another man the same week but he declined to sue). The year the New York Times’ reputation took a beating over its failure to accurately report on WMDs in Iraq. And let’s not forget the furor over a “nudge” that never was.
Media errors caused incredible consequences for average citizens and the media in 2005. These consequences, though dire for all involved, do have a silver lining. They are a powerful argument in favor of instituting a higher standard of accuracy in the media. Fact checking needs to play a greater role in the editing process, anti-plagiarism software should be utilized within newsrooms, and the correction must be evolved to meet a higher standard of disclosure.
2005 was the Year of Consequences. Let’s make 2006 the Year of Action.
But enough doom and gloom. This year delivered many shocking and hilarious corrections and errors from around the world, and the best are collected below. It’s the Crunks! Enjoy. And be sure to read our 2005 Plagiarism Round-Up below.
The Crunks ’05
Correction of the Year
Last year’s winner in this category was a remarkable correction, albeit a very late one. It was a clear winner, an easy choice. This year was more difficult. There were many funny corrections, and many terrible errors. Our choice this year is a correction that combines many elements that are indicative of the correction format: it is very short, the error is very bad and also very funny, and the correction is entirely inadequate. Ladies and Gentleman, the Correction of the Year for 2005, as published in the Denver Daily News on July 27:
The Denver Daily News would like to offer a sincere apology for a typo in Wednesday’s Town Talk regarding New Jersey’s proposal to ban smoking in automobiles. It was not the author’s intention to call New Jersey ‘Jew Jersey.’
Yes, it’s a terrible error. Offensive, even. And the resulting correction is hilarious. But another reason we singled this baby out is that, like so many corrections, it begs for much more detail and a more complete explanation. The News offends an entire state and a major religion and all it can muster is 39 words? Only a newspaper could get away with that.
Best Error
Yes, it has to go to Newsweek. (Background here and here.)
As you likely already know, The May 9 issue of Newsweek contained a short article that said American interrogators had desecrated the Koran, even flushing it down the toilet in one instance. The article cited a single, anonymous government source who said an internal investigation had turned up the evidence. Newsweek checked with two Defense Department officials to see if they had any objections to the report. They didn’t voice any. So the story ran and things were quiet until newspapers in Pakistan and Afghanistan began running accounts of the story. Then one politician used the report to help spur on protests that turned into riots that killed at least 15 people.
Suddenly, the White House was all over the report, criticizing Newsweek and calling for a retraction. In the May 16 issue, Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker penned an Editor’s Note that said the magazine was unable to totally verify its information and that it regrets it “…got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.”
White House Press secretary Scott McClellan told Reuters: “It’s puzzling that while Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refused to retract the story…I think there’s a certain journalistic standard that should be met and in this instance it was not.”
Whitaker stood strong, refusing to retract the story. In one interview he said, “We’re not retracting anything. We don’t know what the ultimate facts are.”
Oh my. Not retracting because you don’t know what the facts are. The pile-on continued and Newsweek was unable to defend its reporting. Other newspapers had reported about Koran desecration in previous articles, but no one had said a Koran was flushed down the toilet. Finally, Newsweek retracted the story. At one point, the New York Post ran a front-page headline: “Holy Shiite.”
How embarrassing for everyone.
Typo of the Year
Feast your eyes on this November Reuters report about the recall of “beef panties.”
First Runner Up
From the Dallas Morning News:
Norma Adams-Wade’s June 15 column incorrectly called Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk a socialist. She is a socialite.
Second Runner Up
This jolly typo/correction comes from the Liverpool Daily Post in England:
Technology has revolutionised most of our lives in recent years and the media has particularly benefited from developments in IT and communications. But all technology should always be treated with a degree of caution. This was a lesson brought into sharp focus last week following a review of the Welsh National Opera’s double bill performance of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci at the Empire Theatre. The problem arose when the computer spell checker did not recognise the term “WNO” (Welsh National Opera). A slip of the finger caused it to be replaced with the word “winos”. All stories in the Daily Post go through a series of checks for error, but unfortunately this one slipped through the net. It just goes to show that it’s hard to beat the good, old-fashioned dictionary.
Numerical Error of the Year
A May article from Reuters brought a whole new perspective to WWII, at least until this correction came along:
“Please read in paragraph nine: ‘about 27 million Soviet citizens died’ … instead of … ‘more than 27 Soviet citizens died’.”
First Runner Up
An August correction from New Zealand’s Dominion Post:
In yesterday’s Terry Hall column Fletcher Building revenues should have been $3.9 billion rising to $4.6 billion in the latest year, not $4661 billion. Carter Holt’s revenues should have been $3.5 billion, with a broker forecast of $3.19 billion, not $3193 billion as reported.
Best Rewriting of History
From the New York Times:
An obituary of the civil rights leader James Forman yesterday misstated a word in describing his call, in 1969, for reparations to be paid by Protestant and Jewish groups for the crimes of slavery. Mr. Forman asked for $500 million for crimes perpetrated against generations of blacks, not “by” them.
Best Use of Photo Archives
The Calgary Herald ran a stunning front-page photo on Dec. 30 of people fleeing a massive wave. (Yes, that’s technically last year but it was published after last year’s awards.) Unfortunately, it wasn’t a shot of the tsunami in question. As noted in the paper’s apology, several other media outlets also used the image. An image of the front page is below. Credit to Newsdesigner.com for the image.
The Strange Bedfellows Award
Congratulations to The Guardian, which managed to make two people roll over in their graves with just one error:
In our G2 cover story about Hunter S Thompson yesterday we mistakenly attributed to Richard Nixon the view that Thompson represented “that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character”. On the contrary, it was what Thompson said of Nixon.
Best Porn Errors
For some reason, we come across many porn related errors and corrections each year, and they’re usually hilarious. First we have a case of misdirection. In February two publications, YM Your Prom and Teen Prom of Fairchild and Hearst respectively, ran the same ad that contained an incorrect URL. Rather than going to a teen-friendly site, the ad sent people to a “child porn” site. This is similar to the Prickly City porn URL snafu that we chronicled last year. From a MediaWeek story:
Fairchild Publications, publisher of Jane and Modern Bride, announced it will pull some 200,000 copies of YM Your Prom off newsstands after Studio 17, a prom-dress advertiser, mistakenly printed a child-porn Web site address in two of its six ad pages. Fairchild had put a total of 680,000 copies on newsstand in late December, but an estimated 75 percent had already been sold.
Then there was this awful error in Us Weekly magazine:
Best Irony
Sure, this seems like an average (and all too common) correction from the Columbus Dispatch:
Linda Schellkopf, daughter of the late Hal Schellkopf, lives in Clintonville. Because of a reporter’s error, a story on Page B4 of yesterday’s Metro & State section indicated otherwise.
Then you take a gander at the obit that spawned it:
‘Dispatch’ editor loved accuracy
Harold B. “Hal” Schellkopf, a former Dispatch editor in several departments over 38 years, died yesterday.
…Schellkopf was a stickler for accuracy when he retired as assistant managing editor in 1989. And he often looked to impart that love for the written word in younger journalists, even long after his retirement.
“Hal was a by-the-book journalist who insisted on the highest standards of journalism,” said Michael F. Curtin, vice chairman and associate publisher of The Dispatch, who worked with Schellkopf in the newsroom. “Hal wanted to do it right, and he wanted the whole newsroom to do it right…”
Best Misuse of the Internet
The gist of a story that ran twice in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and on Ananova: Man gets trapped in car after an avalanche. Man has 60 half-liter bottles of beer with him. Man drinks beer and urinates his way to freedom.
Sound too good to be true? It was — the story is an Internet hoax. AJC editor Julia Wallace penned an apology that appeared on February 22. Here it is:
A column on page 3 of the Feb. 11 Wheels section recounted a story about a man who survived an avalanche in Slovakia. A one-paragraph synopsis of this story also appeared in Atlanta & the World on Feb. 2. In fact, the story is a myth circulating via the Internet and e-mail. The Feb. 11 column repeated a common Internet version almost verbatim and without attribution. The Feb. 2 synopsis was culled from the Web site of a British tabloid. We are reviewing the freelance and editing procedures that allowed these items to get in the newspaper. We’ll report back on what we find and changes we plan to make. We work hard to make sure what you read is accurate and original. In these cases, we let you down. I apologize.
Best Case(s) of Mistaken Identity
Sharing a name with a convicted mobster can be dangerous. Just ask Frank Calabrese, a Chicago businessman. Or Stanley Swieton, also from Chicago. Calabrese opened up the Chicago Tribune one day in April, turned to page 18, and found his picture in a graphic titled “Infrastructure of a Chicago mob.” The paper inadvertently used his image instead of one for Frank Calabrese Sr. who is currently in prison. The next day the Trib used a picture of Stanley Swieton and identified him as Joseph “The Clown” Lombardo, another mobster. To make matters worse, the pic ran on the front page under a headline asking, “Have you seen this `Clown?”
Calabrese subsequently sued the paper for $1 million. Here are the corrections:
A graphic explaining the alleged infrastructure of the Chicago Outfit mob on Page 18 of Tuesday’s main news section incorrectly used a picture of businessman Frank Calabrese instead of mobster Frank Calabrese Sr. A story explaining the mistake appears on Page 1 of today’s Metro section.
A picture caption on Page 1 Wednesday incorrectly identified a man on a bicycle as the reputed mob boss Joey “the Clown” Lombardo. In fact, the man’s name is Stanley Swieton and he has no ties to organized crime. A story explaining the mistake is on Page 1 of today’s Metro section.
Best Pope-Related Error
The demise of Pope John Paul II elicited a ton of papal errors and corrections. This, from the Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia, was the best/worst of the bunch:
The, Like, Totally Best Reporting of High School Gossip
The Kitchener-Waterloo Record in Ontario, Canada ran an April expose about sex and high school. At the heart of the story — not to mention in the lead — was the re-telling of an incident when a “…Grade 9 girl was discovered giving oral sex to a Grade 12 boy in a washroom during a student dance.” Alas, it was not so. From a follow-up article explaining the mistake (full post):
High school gossip can spread faster than the most aggressive computer virus.
And no one knows this better than students, staff and teachers at Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute in Kitchener.
It was a Friday night last fall, the first dance of the school year. There was plenty of supervision, both by teachers and senior students. One female teacher stationed in front of a men’s washroom saw a girl follow a boy into the washroom.
According to Cameron Heights principal Kelly Kempel, the teacher who saw the girl immediately told the girl to get out.
Student Rachael Baker, who is on the student council, was helping to organize and supervise the dance. She wasn’t right by the washroom and didn’t see the teacher confront the girl, but she heard other teens gathering and talking about it.
By the end of that evening, the gossip had evolved into a story that a girl had been caught in the washroom performing oral sex on a male student.
It wasn’t true, but “a lot of people were talking about it, at the dance and afterwards,” Baker said.
Best Hoax
A supposed craze in tech-enabled romance — as reported by several media outlets and acted out in an episode of CSI: Miami — was for people with Bluetooth-enabled phones to hook up for illicit, anonymous sexual encounters. It was called “toothing.” Reuters wrote about it, as did Wired News and the BBC, among others. Unfortunately, the story was too good to be true: the creators of “toothing” soon revealed it to be a hoax. Here’s how Reuters explained “toothing” to the world:
LONDON, England (Reuters) — British commuters take note — the respectable person sitting next to you on the train fumbling with their cell phone might be a “toother” looking for sex with a stranger.
“Toothing” is a new craze where strangers on trains, buses, in bars and even supermarkets hook up for illicit meetings using messages sent via the latest in phone technology.
“Toothing is a form of anonymous sex with strangers — usually on some form of transport or enclosed area such as a conference or training seminar,” says the “Beginner’s Guide To Toothing” on a Web site dedicated to the pursuit…
Dozens of news organizations were duped by pranksters claiming to be practitioners of “toothing.” In reality, an online forum was created and the pranksters persuaded friends to fill the site with scores of salacious, but fictitious, stories. It was from the contributors to this forum that Wired News found and interviewed – via email – the subjects of the story.
Best Unintended Hoax and Best Repetition of An Error
This one simultaneously demonstrates the gullibility of the media and its low opinion of Britney Spears.
In March Allure magazine ran an interview with pop songstress Britney Spears. A columnist at the Philadelphia Daily News read the interview and proceeded to write a spoof column that purported to have quotes from Britney. Any reader could tell it was a spoof. MSNBC.com, however, couldn’t. It picked up one of the fake quotes and published it. This in turn caused The Washington Post, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Richmond Times-Dispatch and Us Weekly to pick it up. Here is the “quote” in question:
“It’s this reality. Like omigod, I have to tell the maid to buy diapers and get the pool boy to walk the dog? Can’t I just make out with Kevin all the time? Being married sucks.”
The incident caused the Post to run this correction
The March 18 Names & Faces column included a quote that was attributed to Britney Spears via Allure magazine. The quote was actually a spoof, written by a Philadelphia Daily News reporter, of an Allure interview with Spears. The spoof was then picked up as an actual quote by MSNBC.com.
Best Pulping
In April England’s Sunday Mirror newspaper was forced to recall and trash an early run after they identified the wrong man as a convicted rapist who won £7m in the lottery last year. Here’s what The Guardian had to say about the story:
In the scoop-hungry world of the Sunday tabloids, a picture of Iorworth Hoare – better known in the trade as the “Lotto rapist” – inspecting £500,000 yachts in a seaside resort, seemed a momentous coup.
For the Sunday Mirror, locked as always in the perennial dogfight with the News of The World, the picture of the serial offender and £7m lottery winner also presented a considerable commercial opportunity.
“On the loose” screamed the front-page story, which was tagged – inevitably in the circumstances – “World Exclusive.”
The only difficulty was the fact that the man displayed was not the “Lotto rapist” at all, a conclusion only reached by the newspaper’s executives after they had printed between 140,000 and 150,000 copies of yesterday’s edition. They do not know who the misidentified man is, only that he is not who they supposed him to be.
The Learn Your Lesson Award
A correction from the Guardian:
In a Comment piece headed, We must not forget how war was won, page 22, May 7, we wrote of “the genocidal destruction of the Jewish and gypsy (sic) populations”. Gypsy takes a capital G. The stylebook says so: Gypsies u[pper]c[ase], recognised as an ethnic group under the Race Relations Act, as are Irish Travellers. The point has been made in corrections on the following occasions: December 7 1999; March 3 2000; May 4 2000; March 3 2001; July 25 2001; August 1 2001; September 1 2001; December 14 2001; February 19 2003; September 29 2004; March 3 2005.
Best Tall Tale
The Virginian-Pilot ran a moving, powerful front page story in May about a son making a motorcycle ride to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in honor of his father’s service in the war. A reporter followed the man on his trek, but things fell apart when they both came home. The man’s father said he never served in Vietnam. In fact, hardly anything about the son’s tale was true. The Pilot ran a lengthy article highlighting the “discrepancies.” Some excerpts:
Carl Stanley of Suffolk rode a motorcycle to Washington, D.C., on Saturday, joining a pilgrimage that each Memorial Day weekend sees thousands of bikers converge on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Stanley said he was making the trip to honor his father, whom he described as a Vietnam War veteran who couldn’t get to “the Wall” himself.
The motive part may be true. Much of the rest of the story, which ran on the front page of Monday’s Virginian-Pilot, may not be.
Carl Stanley’s father, Carlos Martin Stanley , said he did not serve in Vietnam. He said he was not an Air Force pilot during the conflict, and did not crash “in enemy country,” as his son told Pilot reporter Stephanie Heinatz . He was not captured by the North Vietnamese, nor did he escape from a North Vietnamese prison camp, the elder Stanley said.
Moreover, the names of his wartime friends aren’t carved into the memorial. A rubbing made from the wall preserved the name of a stranger.
Exactly what the senior Stanley did in uniform was still murky Wednesday, but in several interviews with Heinatz, Carl Stanley credited his account of his father’s service to the man himself. He said he had grown up hearing of the elder Stanley’s wartime exploits in Korea and Vietnam.
Best Delayed Correction
From the New York Times:
An obituary on Jan. 6, 1993, about William G. McLoughlin, an emeritus professor of history and religion at Brown University, misstated the date and cause of his death. Professor McLoughlin died on Dec. 28, 1992, not on Jan. 4, 1993; the cause was colon cancer, not liver cancer. The article also misstated the location of his World War II military service. It was at Fort Sill, Okla., not in Europe. The Times learned of the errors through a recent e-mail message from a family member.
Best Judy Miller Correction
Gawker got its hands on an internal New York Times memo that was also a correction. It seems that the address provided for people to send books to imprisoned Times staffer Judith Miller was wrong. The memo:
August 22, 2005
Judy Miller Address CorrectionThe address to send books to Judy Miller was incorrect. The error was caught by C.J. Satterwhite, a news assistant for City Weekly, who had a 34-lb box of books returned to her.
Here is the correct address:
Barbara Brincefield
Cahill, Gordon, Reindel
1990 K St. N.W., Suite 950
Washington, DC 20006
Best Abuse of Punditry
In August, a Fox News pundit identified a home he said belonged to a terrorist. It did belong to the man he named — three years ago. Now it belongs to a family and they lived a nightmare because of the mistake. The LA Times report on the incident:
In what Fox News officials concede was a mistake, John Loftus, a former U.S. prosecutor, gave out the address Aug. 7, saying it was the home of a Middle Eastern man, Iyad K. Hilal, who was the leader of a terrorist group with ties to those responsible for the July 7 bombings in London.
Hilal, whom Loftus identified by name during the broadcast, moved out of the house about three years ago. But the consequences were immediate for the Voricks.
…A driver yelled a profanity at the family and called them terrorists as they barbecued on their patio Aug. 14. Some drivers have stopped and photographed the house, Randy Vorick said.
Last weekend, someone spray-painted “Terrist” on their home. Police, who have regularly patrolled their house since the day after the broadcast, now station a squad car across the street…
The Voricks said they had made several unsuccessful attempts to contact Fox News and Loftus by telephone and e-mail. They want a public apology and correction.
Both have issued apologies — Fox in a one-line statement to the Los Angeles Times and Loftus in an e-mail to the family — after being contacted by the newspaper. The Voricks say they have yet to see or hear a correction.
“John Loftus has been reprimanded for his careless error, and we sincerely apologize to the family,” said Fox spokeswoman Irena Brigante.
Loftus also apologized and told The Times last week that “mistakes happen.”
“I’m terribly sorry about that. I had no idea. That was the best information we had at the time,” he said.
Best Backhanded Correction
From the Sunday Mirror (UK):
Last Sunday I implied Stretch Mark Durden- Smith wouldn’t be presenting ITV2’s I’m A Celebrity coverage because bosses didn’t want to pay for his airplane seat(s). It has since transpired it’s actually because his wife is expecting twins and is busily eating for three as we speak.
So lovely when couples have something in common.
Best Translation Error
From the Denver Post:
Because of an editor’s error, a sentence on page 8D on Tuesday in a story about Rockies prospect Hector Gomez buying a bus was changed from “On the back he put ‘Los Peloteros’ which in Spanish means ‘The Ballplayers’” to “he put ‘Los Plotters’ which in Spanish means ‘The Pallbearers.’”
Best Peek Behinds The Scenes
The Des Moines Register published a rough draft of a column on its website. The headline begins, “NOT DONE,” and the last line of the piece is: “So what should the candidates address? Here are some examples:” And that’s where it ends.
Take a look at the top of the piece:
Best Use of Photoshop
USA Today caught much heat for altering a photo of Condoleezza Rice that made her look somewhat demonic. Here’s the editor’s note that the paper attached to the story where the photo appeared:
Editor’s note: The photo of Condoleezza Rice that originally accompanied this story was altered in a manner that did not meet USA TODAY’s editorial standards. The photo has been replaced by a properly adjusted copy. Photos published online are routinely cropped for size and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance. In this case, after sharpening the photo for clarity, the editor brightened a portion of Rice’s face, giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards.
And the photos:
Most Useless Use of Correction
In October, the New York Times ran a CD review of the Toronto-based band Broken Social Scene. The review said incorrectly that they were from Montreal. In fact, the review made several mentions of the band’s (incorrect) hometown in making a critique of its music. A Toronto Star piece noted how useless the review was in light of the glaring errors. Then we took a look on the Times’ site and saw that the online version of the review still had all the references to Montreal, even though a short correction had been appended. We called on the Times to “pull this article off the site, have it rewritten, and post a new, more expansive correction.” We also sent a polite note to public editor Byron Calame noting the correction was inadequate and the online version of the article still contained the errors. We didn’t receive a response, but a subsequent issue of the Times did include a more expansive correction:
The Critics’ Choice column on Oct. 10, about new CD’s, included a review of the band Broken Social Scene and the album bearing its name. The review referred to “other Montreal bands,” “the sound of 21st-century Montreal,” the city’s momentum and the band’s “Montreal exuberance.” While a vibrant Montreal music scene indeed exists – as described in detail in Arts & Leisure on Feb. 6 – Broken Social Scene is not part of it; the band is based in Toronto. (An earlier correction, on Oct. 13, omitted an explanation of the Montreal references.)
The problem? Even with this second correction, the online review still included all the references to Montreal. In fact, it still does. As we asked at the time, what good is a correction if you don’t actually correct the error(s)?
Best Service Journalism
From the Journal Times of Racine, WI:
Parting Shot
One of our other favorite corrections from the past year was this one from the Washington Post:
An article in the Feb. 6 Arts section implied incorrectly that Eva Zeisel was involved in a plot to assassinate Joseph Stalin. That was the unsubstantiated charge made to arrest and imprison her.
Looks like it has held up well.
If you’d like to read Regret’s corrections from the past year, go here. In the meantime, keep visiting.
