Regret the Error

The Observer, the Sunday sister paper to the Guardian, recently collected some of its best/worst corrections from last year. We posted them below. Also, Britain’s Private Eye magazine recently named the Correction of the Year in its "Hackwatch
Awards: The very worst of 2005." We’re told it went to the
Observer for the first one listed below.

‘Sheep might be dumb… but they’re not stupid’ (News, 6 March) said
that studies in Oxford showed that a Caledonian heifer called Betty had
managed to bend a piece of wire to construct a hook and retrieve food
from a jar. Betty is, in fact, a New Caledonian crow, a creature
perhaps better adapted to bending wire than a cow.

‘Revealed:
Callas’s secret passion’ (World news, 24 July) intended to refer to
Aristotle Onassis as ‘the shipping magnate’ – not ‘the shopping
magnate’.

Our interview with American literary sensation Benjamin
Kunkel (Review, 20 November) was accompanied by a panel of quotes from
US reviews, supplied by his publisher. One, from Entertainment Weekly,
read: ‘Kunkel has succeeded in crafting a voice of singular
originality’ but omitted the next line ‘- one you want to punch in the
mouth.’

The late John Paul II was a remarkable man, but if he had
travelled ‘more than 500 million miles’ as we claimed in ‘The man in
white who changed the world’ (News, 3 April), he would have
circumnavigated the earth about 20,000 times. We meant 500,000 miles.

Observer
Food Monthly (10 July) misquoted chef Michael Caines as saying of the
restaurant Andrews on the Weir, at Porlock Weir, Somerset: ‘On some
days, you can spot whales in the distance.’ Wales would be more likely.

With thanks to Simon, a Regret reader, for sending this along.

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