Daily Beast Washington bureau chief and former Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz recently added a rather important correction to a story of his that was published back in November. (Not that it's labeled as a correction on the story…) Here's an excerpt from a post by Kurtz that explains the nature of the error: [...]
A correction on page 2 of Wednesday 's front section erroneously stated that a brief ("Ex-clerk pleads guilty in theft") was published in Monday's Hampton Roads section. It actually appeared in Tuesday's Hampton Roads section. Link Thanks, Scott! Report an error
In 2010, The Star published an even 300 corrections in the print edition, out of around 41,000 separate stories. Those numbers don’t tell the whole story, though. Photographs, captions, graphics and other informational items don’t figure into that 41,000 figure, but they do sometimes generate corrections. By comparison, 2009 saw 383 corrections out of about [...]
In an interview for a story on Page B4 on Saturday, Margaret Brown said she "lived for a while within the Muslim society of Istanbul, Turkey, where they wanted to kill Israelis." Brown wishes to clarify that it was two non-Turkish students who expressed those sentiments. "I heard no general animus against Israel in Turkey [...]
A picture of an EMU Australia ugg boot was used in error on Saturday with a story about a different company, Marksun Australia Pty Ltd, being taken to court over allegations it falsely claimed its ugg boots were made in Australia. EMU Australia has no involvement in the case. Report an error
In a Jan. 6 story, The Associated Press reported CNN anchor Piers Morgan's claim that his interview with then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown turned the tide of Gordon's election campaign in his favor. While Brown got a boost in the polls after the interview, the story should have noted that he subsequently lost the 2010 [...]
A report in the Slap Shot hockey column on Dec. 26 misidentified the captain of the Dallas Stars who was praised for providing inspiration by playing with a badly broken nose. He is Brenden Morrow — not Brad Richards, a teammate. And because of that error, a quotation by Dallas Coach Marc Crawford was erroneously [...]
Last week I made an offer to my fellow journalists: if you create a personal accuracy checklist, I'll send you a free copy of my book. Checklists are the best tool for preventing factual errors. I want more of us in the press to use them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. [...]
The Chicago Sun-Times ran the picture of the wrong baseball player on the front page of its Saturday sports section. Off the Bench explains: The print news business is a tough one, and there are thousands of chances for a screw-up in every edition that goes out. Some of those screw-ups are a little worse [...]
Writing headlines is an art – and a challenge. Nothing we do in the print trade comes in for more criticism. Headlines are believed to typify everything that has always been wrong with journalism – brash, stupid, shameless, addicted to forceful expression at the expense of factual accuracy and intellectual discrimination. It's all true, of [...]
Correction: Because of a production error, over the past several days wrong years appeared for events featured in “This Day in History,'' published in the “g'' section. The events and correct years are as follows: The United States closed its embassy in Yemen (2010); Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel suffered a stroke (2006); John [...]
There has already been a lot of discussion and reporting about the mistakes made by various news organizations while reporting the horrific shooting that took place in Arizona on the weekend. (My headline on this post only mentions Rep. Giffords, but she is of course not the only victim.) As news — and errors — [...]
The shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others at a public event earlier today resulted in an onslaught of breaking news reporting. Major news organizations raced to gather reporting, and information began to spread quickly. As is often the case, this led to a lot of mistakes — including reports from NPR, Reuters, CNN, [...]
A freelance writer and journalism graduate of Columbia University was caught fabricating sources in a recent piece for the Village Voice.* Here's a note from the paper's editor: Freelance writer Rob Sgobbo's article "For-Profit Blues" was removed from the website after the Voice learned that Sgobbo had invented a character, "Tamicka Bourges," who claimed she [...]
An article on Tuesday about research into the mechanics of bird flight misstated the number of hummingbird species. It is about 350, not about 9,000. (There are approximately 9,000 species of birds over all.) Link Report an error
A PHOTOGRAPH that accompanied a story in yesterday's Daily News was not of the massage therapist Shannon O'Toole, but of a different woman, an author also named Shannon O'Toole, who wrote "Wedded to the Game: The Real Lives of NFL Women." That book, published by the University of Nebraska press in 2006, is a nonfiction [...]
Ronald George: An article in the Dec. 30 Section A about retiring Chief Justice Ronald M. George of the California Supreme Court incorrectly referred to the "late" Sargent Shriver. Shriver, the father-in-law of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is alive. Link Report an error
Last summer, two respected medical journalists — Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky — launched a lovely blog called Retraction Watch. It's dedicated to "Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process." I wrote about the site in my weekly CJR column and have been watching it highlight some notable and amusing retractions. This week [...]
I owe Steve Buttry a big favor. In October I went to Washington to attend the Online News Association's conference. Buttry, who is the director of community engagement at TBD, invited me to give a presentation about errors and accuracy at American University. This was part of TBD and AU's series of blogging workshops. You [...]
We have no copy editors at TBD and got criticized for that after a famous correction. While the newsroom staffing was Editor Erik Wemple’s decision, I fully support it. You can’t do everything, and a digital operation can correct after publication with less damage than a print publication very few people saw the original error [...]
The holiday season is supposed to be a time of happiness, but there has been little cheer from readers upset about a chronic Post problem: a lack of quality control. The past few years have seen a crescendo of complaints about typos, grammatical errors and minor factual mistakes. In recent weeks, a string of lapses [...]
In late December, the editor of Palo Alto Patch apologized for an incident of plagiarism on the site: We recently discovered that one of our freelance writers lifted information for one of his business reports from VentureBeat, an online news site covering technology and innovation in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. While we provide all of [...]
Our article "London's 'Mr Party' defies court to carry on carousing" of 19 December 2010 stated that Mr Edward Davenport has hired out his house on at least one occasion since an injunction forbidding such use of the premises was enforced in July. We accept that it is untrue that Mr Edward Davenport has hired [...]
WE would like to make clear that Viz comic's Aldridge Prior The Hopeless Liar, is no longer Britain's biggest fibber. He is grounded in reality compared to Tommy Sheridan and we are now happy to accept that Mr Prior: Is invincible because he is made of a rare alloy metal. Composed the famous guitar riff [...]
A report from NBA FanHouse: An ESPNEWS anchor has been suspended for an unknown period for lifting portions of a newspaper column and using them in a script without attributing where the passage originated. Will Selva, an anchor at ESPN for three years, issued an apology Wednesday for taking all but of a few words [...]
