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.
