Regret the Error

A Quebec man recently threatened to sue the Montreal Gazette after the paper’s error made him think he’d won a huge lottery jackpot when he hadn’t. (Read our first post on this here.)
Today the paper ran a "Note to Readers" on A2 from its publisher, Alan Allnutt. He apologizes for the mistake — which he says "might rank as the most publicized error we’ve made in recent times" — and also takes the opportunity to get a dig in at the man and his lawyer for running to tell their story to other media. He writes, "There was, as far as we can ascertain, no effort to contact The Gazette prior to going to other media with the story."
Allnutt also makes a very frank admission: "…The Gazette publishes about 100,000 words and numbers every day and we simply cannot guarantee all the information’s accuracy." That is perhaps one of the most startlingly blunt admissions we’ve read when it comes to the accuracy of newspapers. Journalists know this to be true, but it might come as a suprise to readers.
We’ll see if Allnutt’s letter has any effect on the mistaken lottery winner and his lawyer — and if the media that initially ran his story will follow-up with the Gazettes’s response. The full "Note to Readers":

Note to Readers 
The Gazette made a mistake on Sunday, Aug. 13.
It wasn’t the first and won’t be the last time we make a faux pas, but this one might rank as the most publicized error we’ve made in recent times.
A Montreal man has told the media that he thought he held the winning 6/49 ticket of the Saturday, Aug. 12, draw for a few hours based on the numbers published in the Aug. 13 edition of The Gazette.
As most readers know, we publish a long list of lottery winning numbers on Page 2 every Sunday. The list includes a week’s worth of numbers and is assembled the previous evening, with the final additions being made after Loto-Quebec posts the numbers drawn Saturday night, including 6/49, at about 10:30. We picked up the Wednesday draw by mistake and ran it twice in the list. Our checks and balances failed and the error wasn’t caught.
However, the correct numbers for the 6/49 draw were in The Gazette that day – in Loto-Quebec’s ad on Page A7.
We acknowledged the error the next day, Monday, Aug. 14, in a story about the fact that four tickets had the real winning numbers.
We heard from a few readers who worried that they had thrown away tickets that might have had three or four correct numbers, and, as in the past, we reminded people that they must check their tickets with a Loto merchant to be sure. We also decided at that point to restore a disclaimer that we ran for years, reminding people that the list we publish on Page 2 is not intended to be official. That disclaimer ran on Tuesday, Aug. 15.
At this point we were unaware that Ulysse Maillet had thought he had a winner. In fact, it was our friends at Global TV who called our newsroom administrator on Friday afternoon to say that they were doing a story about Mr. Maillet (they didn’t tell us his name at the time) and that they had dealt with a lawyer who said he had sent The Gazette a letter.
But Mr. Maillet and his representatives had been very busy, appearing on TV and radio programs telling the same story over and over. There was, as far as we can ascertain, no effort to contact The Gazette prior to going to other media with the story. I can only conclude that Mr. Maillet’s counsel decided to go ahead with a publicity campaign in parallel with any supposed legal action he intends to take.
We have no reason to doubt the sincerity of Mr. Maillet’s claim that he had thought for a short while that he had won a lottery. But The Gazette publishes about 100,000 words and numbers every day and we simply cannot guarantee all the information’s accuracy. In the last 20 years we have published nine corrections of Loto numbers. I wish I could say it was fewer, but then we have published lottery numbers on about 7,200 mornings in that time period.
When The Gazette makes an error, we correct it and we usually end the correction with a statement of regret. In this case I want to direct that regret to Mr. Maillet and offer him our sincere apologies.
Alan Allnutt
Publisher

 Report an error