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Crunks 2009: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections

December 16, 2009 – 8:01 am

While you’re here, please consider purchasing a copy of the Regret the Error book, which won an award for media criticism from the National Press Club, and also contains hundreds of hilarious corrections. You can learn more about the book and read some reviews here. The paperback edition, which includes a new introduction, came out earlier this year.

Trend of the Year: Calling Bullshit (aka Fact Checking)

Perhaps that’s not the most polite way of putting it, but fact checking continues to emerge as a favorite practice of the public and certain elements of the press. (Though most of us in the press spend more time calling bullshit on each other than checking our own work.) In a recent column for Columbia Journalism Review, I stated that fact checking “is becoming one of the great American pastimes of the Internet age.”

Everybody loves to call bullshit. Thanks to the Internet, it’s easier than ever before.

The irony is that this trend emerges at a time when professional fact checkers, who traditionally worked at magazines, are being laid off. As a result, it appears as though the future of fact checking is in open, public and participatory systems and organizations, rather than the closed, professional systems traditionally used by large magazines. The Internet has made this shift possible.

Here’s a selection of fact checking-related news from the past year:

  • Even before Sarah Palin’s book was released, the Associated Press engaged in a significant internal effort to identify factual errors in the text. Meaning: they fact checked her book before it was on shelves.
  • The Daily Show dedicated numerous segments to fact checking media reports and the questionable declarations of talking heads. As noted by this Poynter Online story, the Daily Show actually employs a full-time researcher/fact checker. The show’s big coup this year was twice exposing that Fox News mixed old and new crowd footage of conservative events, thus creating the impression that attendance was significantly larger than it was.
  • The value of fact checking for journalists was perhaps best demonstrated by a group of students in the Netherlands. A new program at the Tilburg School of Journalism sees fourth-year students spend a three-week stint fact checking the work of Dutch media. When I wrote about the program in October, I was told that roughly 80 percent of the stories they’ve checked included some form of factual error.
  • We reached a strange milestone this year when CNN fact checked a comedy sketch from Saturday Night Live (their story was inspired by a similar report by PolitiFact):

  • Speaking of PolitiFact, it won a Pulitzer this year for its work fact checking the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. It’s now reportedly close to a syndication deal with major newspapers. Is this the future of professional fact checking?
  • Finally, if you wonder just how much calling bullshit matters to some journalists, look no further than what happened at the Washington Post earlier this year. Henry Allen, an editor, punched reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia in the face in part because of factual errors contained in a charticle produced by Roig-Franzia and a colleague. Clearly, this accuracy and fact checking stuff is serious business.

Other Notables: Emergence of Tools, Improving Online Standard

I’ve long been lobbying for news organizations and journalists to make more of an effort to prevent and correct factual errors. As journalism continues its move online, it’s more important than ever that corrections and accuracy evolve to fit the new medium. Fortunately, this year saw the emergence of some promising initiatives. Here are four highlights:

  • MediaBugs — I must begin with a disclosure that I’m an unpaid advisor to this project. Author and former Salon.com managing editor Scott Rosenberg won a grant from the Knight Foundation to create MediaBugs, a website that aims to find a better way of bringing the public and journalists together to correct errors. Read more about it here. It will launch next year.
  • hNews — Though not specifically created to deal with these issues, hNews is a project funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the Knight Foundation that could have serious and valuable implications in the realm of accuracy and corrections. Learn more about it here.
  • Django-correx — Ben Welsh, a database producer at the Los Angeles Times, created and released code that can be used to make corrections a more significant and flexible part of a Django-based website. Learn more about it here.
  • Report on Unpublishing — Kathy English, the public editor of the Toronto Star, produced a detailed report, “The Long Tail of News: To Unpublish or not to Unpublish,” that outlined proper practices for dealing with requests to update or delete information — or entire articles — from a news organization’s website. As more newspaper archives go online, this issue will only become more important and time consuming for journalists. Her report is a valuable piece of guidance and research. We need more efforts like this to help create and define the online standard for corrections. Learn more about it here.

Correction of the Year

This year’s winner is without question amusing — not to mention embarrassing for the news organization that published it — in that it demonstrates a certain amount of cultural/musical ignorance. But it earns Correction of the Year honors because of what happened after it was published. This Washington Post correction inspired an amusing Twitter hashtag, which saw people come together to come up with imagined corrections. It’s Correction of the Year because it communicates that people notice and care about corrections, and because it demonstrates the participatory potential being unleashed by the Internet. The correction:

A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.

Additional background here and here.

Runner Up

British Medical Journal:

During the editing of this Review of the Week by Richard Smith (BMJ 2008;337:a2719,doi:10.1136/bmj.a2719), the author’s term “pisshouse” was changed to “pub” in the sentence: “Then, in true British and male style, Hammond met Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, in the pub and did a deal.” However, a pisshouse is apparently a gentleman’s toilet, and (in the author’s social circle at least) the phrase “pisshouse deal” is well known. (It alludes to the tendency of men to make deals while standing side by side and urinating.) In the more genteel confines of the BMJ Editorial Office, however, this term was unknown and a mistake was made in translating it into more standard English. We apologise for any misunderstanding this may have caused.

Other Favorites

News Tribune (Washington State):

A photo caption on Tuesday’s Page A8 said a student was performing the Heimlich maneuver on a dummy. The student was actually playing around and pretending to choke the dummy.

West Australian:

Green gaffe: There’s little doubt eco-warriors love a good chat as much as a tree hug, but our digitally dyslexic reporter’s creation of a new organisation was a revelation for verbose greenies (Recycling record comes under fire, page 18, March 23). It is more apt, of course, to discuss recycling with the Conservation Council than with the loquacious Conversation Council.

Toronto Sun:

A headline on page one of the Toronto Sun yesterday was both inaccurate and misleading. In fact, as the story reported, the mother of a boy involved in a high school fight in Keswick said her son “said something stupid.” She did not say nor imply he was stupid. The Sun regrets the error and apologizes to the boy and his family.

Denver Post:

Because of a reporter’s error, Bill Husted’s column on Page 3B on Sunday contained an item about a tombstone for “Elway the Drug Sniffing Dog.” The tombstone was digitally fabricated for a blog and does not exist.

The Independent (U.K.):

Further to the reference in the paper on 14 June to Rebekah Wade allegedly hitting her first husband, Ross Kemp, after a “drinking bout” with David Blunkett, Mr Blunkett has been in touch to correct the record: “the alleged ‘drinking bout’ was a cup of tea at 5.30 in the evening (with witnesses including Rupert Murdoch)… There was no ‘drinking bout’, I’ve never been involved in such a ‘drinking bout’ – with or without Rebekah Wade”.

Los Angeles Times:

Bear sighting: An item in the National Briefing in Sunday’s Section A said a bear wandered into a grocery story in Hayward, Wis., on Friday and headed for the beer cooler. It was Thursday.

The Guardian (U.K.):

A reply to a question in Notes & Queries yesterday recommended purchasing lion and tiger urine from Chester Zoo to stop neighbourhood cats from urinating in a vegetable patch (G2, page 17). Chester Zoo would like to forestall requests for its big cats’ urine: it asks us to make clear that it does not in fact sell either tiger or lion urine. Many years ago the zoo sold elephant dung, but it no longer does.

New York Times:

An article on Aug. 2 about older alumni who have been helped by university career counselors referred imprecisely to comments by a 1990 graduate of Lehigh University who lost his job in February when his company was downsized, and a correction in this space last Sunday misspelled his surname. As the article correctly noted, he is David Monson, not Munson, and he was speaking generally — not about himself — when he said that newly unemployed people sometimes mope around the house in sweatpants.

The Guardian (U.K.):

A comment piece about achievement and frailty in the lives of artistic greats mentioned Wagner’s reminder to his favourite Vienna chambermaid to wear purple knickers next time they met. A Wagner expert points out that the pants in question were pink (To understand genius, forget the purple knickers, 19 August, page 28)

The Guardian (U.K.):

A taste test of various foods described a sample from Anila’s Curry Sauces as starting well but having “a slightly dirty aftertaste”. Our reviewer meant to convey that the aftertaste was odd – not to imply that food hygiene might be poor (Look, no gluten! 19 August, page 14, G2).

Error of the Year: Wafergate

This was a bad year for the Telegraph-Journal, a newspaper in New Brunswick, Canada. First, it came under fire when it dismissed a summer intern after he committed a few factual errors in a controversial story. It also had to apologize for an incident of plagiarism in an unrelated story. But the biggest problem was a front page story that included a fabricated accusation against the Canadian prime minister, as well as a fabricated quote from a prominent priest. In Canada, the ensuing national scandal came to be known as “Wafergate,” and it eventually cost the paper’s editor her job. The publisher was also suspended. Here’s how I described the incident in a previous column:

In early July, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper traveled to New Brunswick to attend the funeral of former Governor General Romeo LeBlanc. At the funeral, the prime minister was given communion. Video footage shows him accepting a wafer from the priest, but cuts away before anyone can see him eat it. Nobody thought much of this until the Telegraph-Journal, a New Brunswick paper, published a front page article claiming that the prime minister put the wafer, which represents the body of Christ, in his pocket. Then everyone piled on the story. Eventually, the prime minister and his spokesman issued strong denials.

Almost three weeks after it set off a national controversy, the paper issued a front page apology and admitted that, “There was no credible support for these statements of fact at the time this article was published, nor is the Telegraph-Journal aware of any credible support for these statements now.” So, uh, how did they end up in the paper?

Then, on September 16, the paper issued another major apology, this time to Monsignor Brian Henneberry for fabricating a quote from him in the offending report. From the apology:

… The Telegraph-Journal said prominently, on the front page, that Monsignor Brian Henneberry, a senior Saint John priest, had “demanded” that Prime Minister Stephen Harper explain what he had done with the communion wafer that he had been given. The newspaper has determined that Monsignor Henneberry said no such thing and believes that the false assertion was wholly the product of improper editorial manipulation …

Though the paper has issued two prominent apologies, one major issue remains: the public doesn’t know who or what caused the paper to fabricate this controversy. Who made the decision to insert the offending accusation and quotes? Why did they do it? Do they still work for the paper? The paper apologized for its errors, but it hasn’t been transparent about what caused them. Sadly, this lack of disclosure is all too common among news organizations.

Runner Up: Hartford Courant Plagiarism

Last year, I noted a rather remarkable case of systemic plagiarism at a weekly paper in Texas. Who would’ve thought we’d see this same issue again in 2009? In early September, the Hartford Courant disciplined six people and admitted publicly that, “Over the last few weeks, The Courant carried several news stories in which the original news source attributions were removed and credit was given to a Courant staffer. This was plagiarism.” The paper was subsequently sued.

Apology of the Year

The Sun (U.K.):

IN a report on May 5, 2009, headlined “Riddle of Boruc, the brunette and his hair straighteners”, we claimed that Artur Boruc had brought two girls to the house he shares with partner Sara Mannei and had sex with one of them. We published a picture which we said showed him straightening one of the girls’ hair. We now accept the picture was in fact of Mr Boruc and his younger sister Paulina in Poland some years earlier, and that neither did Mr Boruc invite back nor have sex with either of the girls in our story. We apologise to Mr Boruc and Ms Mannei for any embarrassment caused.

Runner Up

Daily Mirror (U.K.):

OUR report (”Off their Facebook”, May 30, 2008) said that Amanda Hudson’s house on the Costa del Sol had been wrecked by drunken and out of control teenagers attending her daughter’s 16th birthday party, who had also stolen property. We also referred to an internet posting in which it was claimed that Amanda had punched Jodie because of what happened. We now accept that these allegations were untrue and we apologise to Amanda for the distress and embarrassment caused.

Read More »

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Regret Articles | Tagged | Comments

Bill O’Reilly gets a front page correction

August 4, 2009 – 10:03 pm

stpetersburgThis was on the front page today’s St. Petersburg Times:

Bill O’Reilly has not accused President Barack Obama of racism. An article in Sunday’s Perspective section about the National Association of Black Journalists incorrectly included the Fox newscaster in a list of commentators who have publicly accused the president of racism.

Click on this image to see it on the page (far left column, near the bottom):

stpete

Mediaite’s Steve Krakauer has some interesting background in his post:

TV critic Eric Deggans incorrectly lumped O’Reilly into a column about news personalities who have accused Pres. Obama of racism (his colleague, Glenn Beck, was correctly on that list), but O’Reilly has never said anything like that. The FNC host addressed the story on his program last night as well.

“The problem with Mr. Deggans is acute,” said O’Reilly last night. “All American newspapers have an obligation to hire honest people, not crazed ideologues. Now, I don’t want anyone to lose their jobs, but this situation – beyond the pale.”

For his part, Deggans took to his blog to apologize. “One serving of humble pie, coming right up,” he started.

Deggans also made note of a jinx that apparently came true. When he criticized Alessandra Stanley over her errors, he wrote: “It’s a sure route to jinxland, pointing out the errors of other journalists.”

Read his post to watch the video.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Tagged , , | Comments

NYT public editor addresses errors made in Cronkite article; some basic advice for preventing errors

August 2, 2009 – 12:35 pm

nytbanner1New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt has weighed in on the paper’s recent, error-riddled story about Walter Cronkite. The story, written by television critic Alessandra Stanley, resulted in two corrections, one of which was for seven mistakes. I wrote about the mistakes, and Stanley’s history of error, in a recent column for Columbia Journalism Review.

Hoyt’s column offers new information, such as how five different editors reviewed her story and missed the mistakes. This is a classic example of how easy it is for mistakes to end up in print. It doesn’t matter how many people look at an article; they have to know what they’re supposed to be looking for.

The most interesting revelation in Hoyt’s piece was that, after attention was drawn to Stanley’s errors in 2005, the Times introduced a program to increase the fact checking of her work:

For all her skills as a critic, Stanley was the cause of so many corrections in 2005 that she was assigned a single copy editor responsible for checking her facts. Her error rate dropped precipitously and stayed down after the editor was promoted and the arrangement was discontinued. Until the Cronkite errors, she was not even in the top 20 among reporters and editors most responsible for corrections this year. Now, she has jumped to No. 4 and will again get special editing attention.

The extra scrutiny helped. Then things regressed, and that’s the lesson here. The gap in the plan for “special editing attention” is that it doesn’t include a training component. Stanley could, with a little bit of effort, improve her level of accuracy. Additional oversight isn’t going to train her to be more accurate. It will make her more careful, but it won’t fix the source of the problem. Eventually she will stop receiving special attention and things will go back to the way they were.

It’s kind of a variation on the old “give a man a fish” saying: Give an error-prone reporter special editing attention and you’ll publish fewer of her errors. But train her how to be more accurate and she’ll make fewer errors. That’s a big difference.

I concluded my CJR column by writing that “whatever system [Stanley] has for checking her work isn’t sufficient. The same goes for how the copy desk is handling her articles. The Times can let her twist in the wind with errors like these, or realize this situation is hurting the organization and come up with a training program that helps her stop making simple factual errors at such an alarming rate.”

This is, as they say, a teachable moment. It’s an opportunity for the paper to create a newsroom-wide program that will help all reporters. After all, you can’t give everyone special editing attention. But you can teach good habits that prevent the need for special attention. Eliminate or at least reduce the errors at the source and suddenly there are less things that can slip through the cracks.

After my CJR column appeared online, I received an email from an editor asking me for some error-prevention advice. Here’s what I sent to him:

1. Self-Diagnose: Are you making or missing the same kinds of errors. Do you misspell names? Garble numbers? Etc. Take a month and track your mistakes. Write them down. Note how they happened and any other relevant information. At the end of the month, tally up your errors. Now you know your pain points. I recommend keeping an error journal; just create an Excel doc or Google Doc spreadsheet and keep track of your errors. This is hugely valuable data. (The Times has an internal errors database, so it already keeps some of this data.)

2. Create Good Habits: If you have a tendency to misspell names, then you need to start every interview by asking the person to spell their name. If, as an editor, you tend to overlook misspelled names, then the first thing you do with a new story is check the names. The key is to create habits/actions that are mapped to your mistakes. The best way to do this is to…

3. Use A Checklist: Whether you’re writing or editing, you should use a checklist to guide your fact checking process. I have a sample checklist available as a free download here. And if you need convincing, read this column about why checklists are so powerful.

I know one thing for sure: if Alessandra Stanley started using a checklist to review her work prior to sending it for editing, her level of accuracy would improve.

UPDATE August 3: Steven A. Smith has some good thoughts about this situation over on his blog. A sample:

Reporters with fact-error issues have to work a bit harder, have to develop personal double-checks that can be time-consuming and frustrating, especially on deadline. But that is the only way reporters can work themselves out of an accuracy funk. Some take on the challenge because of professional pride and a genuine desire to do their jobs as well as they can.

Others require a bigger stick. That’s just the truth of it.

I remember one reporter who worked on my regional staff at The Pioneer Press in St. Paul. He had experienced a terrible run of corrections, all the result of careless reporting practices. Working with him, we developed a series of steps he was urged to take before moving any story to his editors. Within days his desktop computer was covered in yellow sticky notes reminding him to check phone numbers and addresses, use the city directory, and so on. He took responsibility and his hard work produced results. His correction rate dropped dramatically and the new habits stuck with him.

But the reporter knew his job was on the line. ‘Fix it or lose it” was the message.

Was such a message delivered to Stanley at the time her editors developed a personalized editing program? If so, does the latest debacle mean she will lose her job? Should she lose her job?

Does “intellectual heft” in reporting compensate for inaccurate reporting?

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Newspapers, Regret Articles | Tagged , , , , | Comments

Rest is fine

July 23, 2009 – 9:38 am

A correction from the New York Times:

An appraisal on Saturday about

Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International.

This is a Stanley correction. I’ll have more on it in my Columbia Journalism Review column, which goes online tomorrow. Update: You can read it here.

Note that posting will be light today; I’m having some server issues and it’s difficult to add new posts.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Tagged , , | Comments

ABC gets partial correction to Stanley story; objective and subjective errors

March 9, 2007 – 10:07 am

nytbanner1Alessandra Stanley wrote a TV column for Wednesday’s NY Times about Brian Williams and the major network anchors that made ABC News hot under the collar. A senior exec at the network fired off a letter to Romenesko that was widely blogged about yesterday. The Times today ran a correction (now included in the online column) to address ABC’s concerns. Let’s compare.
ABC letter:

There are glaring errors in Alessandra Stanley’s column today. For the record, Charlie Gibson was in Washington, DC for the State of the Union (not at his desk in New York as Stanley wrote). He anchored both "World News" and ABC’s primetime coverage of the President’s speech from Capitol Hill. Following the speech, he interviewed Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain…

NY Times correction:

The TV Watch column yesterday about reports from Iraq by the NBC anchor Brian Williams, and the competition among NBC, ABC and CBS to draw viewers to their evening news programs, referred incorrectly to coverage of President Bush’s State of the Union address in January by Charles Gibson, the ABC anchor. He covered it from Washington, not “from his desk in New York.”

Okay, so we’re one for one as of now. Except the ABC letter continued on:

Stanley also falsely asserts that since Gibson took over as anchor in late May, he anchors solely from New York City. That is demonstrably untrue. Gibson has reported from: The Middle East to cover the escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah, including from Jerusalem, the Israeli-Lebanese border and Larnaca, Cyprus (July 16-19); from New Orleans for the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (August 28 &29); from Nickel Mines, PA to cover the Amish school shooting (October 3); from Amman, Jordan for Bush-Maliki summit (November 29 & 30); from Washington, DC, when the 110th Congress convened (January 4); and from Philadelphia (October 5), Boston (October 24), Dallas (November 13), Houston (November 14), Atlanta (November 15&16), Detroit (January 29 & 30), and Chicago (February 12 & 13).

How did Stanley assert that Gibson "anchors solely from New York City"? Here’s the relevant text from her column:

Mr. Gibson hasn’t exactly overexerted himself in his new job. He was the only anchor who didn’t go to Washington to interview Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House. (He entrusted Terry Moran with the task.) He also stayed put for the tornadoes that devastated Florida in early February…

This is where we begin to deal with a more subjective view of error. Anyone reading the above sentences, especially when coupled with the erroneous statement that Gibson was in New York for the State of the Union address, would clearly understand Stanley is suggesting Gibson is a bit of a homebody who doesn’t leave the anchor desk to cover stories. But does she specifically say that he only anchors from New York? No, although it’s also clear that’s what she’s saying.
These hair-splitting distinctions can be very important, but they can also be very frustrating for sources and those being written about. ABC is not going to be 100 percent happy with the correction offered because (and we’re guessing here) it will feel that the article made unfair assertions about Gibson based on inaccurate information. The Times is being strict in only correcting the one clearly stated factual error. The issue of fairness goes uncorrected. This is common; fairness is a difficult, subjective thing to assess and correct.
In this case, we have a media-on-media error and that’s one of the reasons why there has been so much blog chatter. The other reason for the extra attention is that the author is Alessandra Stanley.
In the end, this is a very telling example of why corrections are and aren’t given for certain requests. Was it unfair and incorrect to suggest that Gibson is largely tethered to his NY desk? Based on the evidence supplied by ABC, it appears so. But the fact that the article only suggested this, albeit very clearly, turned ABC’s complaint into one that could be classified as subjective, even if it appears valid. This example shows the balancing act that corrections/section editors walk every day, and it also shows why sources who request corrections are not always pleased with what they receive.
ABC had one final complaint:

Finally, Stanley take a gratuitous and unfounded swipe at Gibson stating that he is on vacation while Williams reports from the Iraq. For the record, this is Gibson’s first vacation in ten months.

This is an issue of fairness and context, not fact. Stanley wrote, "This week, while Mr. Williams is in Iraq, Mr.Gibson is on vacation." That sentence is totally accurate. Yet it exists to drive home her questionable point about the supposedly lackadaisical Gibson. But she hasn’t made a factual error, and so no correction.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers, Regret Articles, Television | Tagged , | Comments Off

Ben and Jen — but which one?

July 26, 2006 – 8:00 am

Nytbanner_226
Gawker and The Huffington Post both discovered an error in Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley’s review of the Tabloid Wars TV show. (Why mention her by name? See here, here and here. ) Notes Gawker:

Speaking of Tabloid Wars, we couldn’t help noting the following in yesterday’s NYT review of the show:
"Even Mr. Morgan however, turns out to have a heart. After reporting
an incorrect rumor about Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, Mr. Morgan is
dispatched at a punitively early hour to Hackensack, N.J., to report on
free prostate cancer screenings for poor men."
All well and good, except the erroneous report was about Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.
Who wrote this piece? We think you’ll be shocked when we reveal the author to be… Alessandra Stanley!

We had just been thinking how we hadn’t seen a Stanley correction a while. So we checked in Nexis and, including this most recent story/forthcoming correction, she appears to have had nine corrections to the 79 stories she has written this year. (Four of those corrections came in January.) That’s a bit of an improvement over her correction rate of last year.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | | Comments Off

The Stanley corrections continue

January 12, 2006 – 8:00 am

Nytbanner_139 Gawker called this one a few days ago (background):

A television review on Monday about the new ABC sitcom "Emily’s Reasons
Why Not" misspelled the surname of the heroine of the novel "Vanity
Fair," a role cited as the type of role in which Heather Graham, the
star of the sitcom, might be funny. She is Becky Sharp, not Sharpe. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | | Comments Off

Gawker does the math on Alessandra Stanley

December 28, 2005 – 8:00 am

Nytbanner_132
Alessandra Stanley’s often alarming corrections were the subject of much discussion this past year. It largely began because of the ridiculous and embarrassing Geraldo nudge that wasn’t. Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune gave her a kick in a column, citing some of her errors (the link to the piece is no longer active), and then John Cook of Reference Tone dove in here. Gawker got in on the act and kept after her with its "Alessandra Stanley Watch."
Now Gawker has gone one better and done research that it claims proves Stanley is the most inaccurate of all New York Times cultural critics. "We checked 2005 corrections rates on 19 Times
cultural critics, and we discovered that Stanley can comfortably claim
the title as Most Inaccurate 2005," they write. "Indeed, she’s more than twice as
inaccurate as the average non-Stanley critic at the Times." The five least accurate Times cultural critics, according to Gawker:

  1. Alessandra Stanley, TV critic: 137 citations, 20 corrections, 15%
  2. Anna Kisselgoff, dance critic: 22 citations, 3 corrections, 14%
  3. Caryn James, film critic: 33 citations, 4 corrections, 12%
  4. Michael Kimmelman, art critic: 53 citations, 6 corrections, 11%
  5. Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic: 41 citations, 4 corrections, 10%

One little note: Some corrections contain more than one error, so the number of corrections doesn’t necessarily mean the number of errors. Not to say that this nitpick negates Gawker’s interesting research.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Blogs, Newspapers | | Comments Off

Colbert strikes a blow for truthiness

November 4, 2005 – 8:00 am

Nytbanner_122Looks like Stephen Colbert read this correction in the New York Times. Gawker found this hilarious transcript from Wednesday night’s The Colbert Report:

Now, before we start, there is something else I need to talk about,
this correction in yesterday’s New York Times. Let’s go full frame with
this.

You see, the Times mistakenly reported that in the first episode of
this show, “The Colbert Report,” THE WORD was “trustiness.” It was, in
fact, “truthiness.”
Trustiness? That’s not even a word!

Doesn’t surprise me one bit the “New York Times” hasn’t heard of truthiness.

I’ll tell you one thing, somebody better go to jail for 85 days over this.

You know what, New York Times? Apology not accepted.

So let’s go straight to THE WORD, which tonight is something even the New York Times can’t possibly get wrong. Cat. C-A-T, cat.

I’ll give the guys over at the “Times” a second to write it down.

Read Gawker’s post here.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers, Television | | Comments Off

Get your fake words straight

November 2, 2005 – 8:00 am

Nytbanner_121The TV Watch column last Tuesday, about "The Colbert Report" on Comedy
Central, misstated the "word of the day" invented for the show’s
feature "The Word." It was "truthiness," not "trustiness." Link

Gawker called this one a week ago. Why so long to correct it?

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | | Comments Off

Calame vindicates Geraldo

September 26, 2005 – 8:00 am

New York Times public editor Byron Calame seems to have found his voice with a column about the Geraldo Rivera/Alessandra Stanley dispute. Calame watched the video footage in question and says there was no "nudge," meaning that Stanley’s description of one is false. Executive editor Bill Keller’s response to Calame seems to admit this. [UPDATE: The Times published an Editor's Note on September 27 that acknowledged there was no nudge. More here.] Here’s what Calame quotes him as writing:

…"frankly," that in light of Mr. Rivera’s reaction to the review, Ms. Stanley "would have been justified in assuming" – and therefore writing, apparently – that Mr. Rivera used "brute force" rather than merely a "nudge" on Sept. 4.

Calame says it’s "disturbing" that Keller seems to imply that Geraldo’s "bad behavior essentially entitles the paper to rely on assumptions and refuse to correct an unsupported fact." More from Keller:

…Mr. Keller’s final reason for rejecting a correction was that Ms. Stanley, "who is writing as a critic, with the license that title brings – was within bounds in her judgment." He elaborated: "Ms. Stanley’s point was that Mr. Rivera was show-boating – that he was being pushy, if not literally pushing – and I think an impartial viewer of the footage will see it that way."
Based on the videotape and outtakes I saw, Ms. Stanley certainly would have been entitled to opine that Mr. Rivera’s actions were showboating or pushy. But a "nudge" is a fact, not an opinion. And even critics need to keep facts distinct from opinions.

Calame also uses the column to draw attention to his ongoing dispute with Times columnist Paul Krugman (background here).

Meanwhile, in the opinion section of The Times, the corrections policy of Gail Collins, the editor of the editorial page, is not being fully enforced. As I have written on my Web journal, Paul Krugman has not been required to correct, in the paper, recent acknowledged factual errors in his column about the 2000 election in Florida.
The Times has long been a trailblazer in its commitment to correcting errors. This is no time to let those standards slip – even when well-known critics and columnists are involved.

The Times owes Geraldo a correction. It seems clear, however, that he won’t get one. This is conduct unworthy of the Times and it only emboldens its critics. Expect this episode to become a frequently-cited example of the Times’ supposed liberal bias and unaccountability. It didn’t need to end up this way.
Calame ends the column by drawing attention to what appears to be an inconsistent application of the Times’ corrections policy. Smaller errors such as misspellings or wrong dates are supposed to fall under the heading "For the Record," while more substantive errors run under the "Corrections" heading. It doesn’t always work out tht way. Here’s what Calame concludes:

Based on the last 30 days, my sense is that many of the errors falling between the two definitions are being treated as "For the Record" corrections.
The one-year mark could be a good time for the veteran editors who handle corrections to apply their long experience to a review of the existing definitions. I hope they would give serious consideration to broadening the definitions as a way to reduce the gap between them.
I would like to see the substantive category expanded to include errors that have practical importance for readers. If there’s an error in information that seems likely to become the basis for action or decision-making by more than a few dozen readers, I think it deserves the prominence offered by the current substantive category. One of the fine-tuning chores, of course, would be to calibrate how many users of the information should be required to qualify for greater prominence.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Tagged , , | Comments Off

The Stanley corrections

September 13, 2005 – 8:00 am

nytbanner1Are corrections a good indicator of a larger problem?
That was one of the questions we posed to Seth Mnookin in a recent interview. Now two journalists are using corrections to question the competence of New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley. First, Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune penned a Sunday column that listed some of Stanley’s "more colorful gaffes." (The extra scrutiny of Stanley’s work is a result  of this dispute between her and Geraldo Rivera. Even the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has weighed in on Rivera’s side.) From Rosenthal’s column:

…We all make mistakes–especially me–but Stanley’s pieces have had doozies.
The Times has issued corrections to point out that the WB is not a cable network and Fox’s short-lived hotel soap "North Shore" was not a program about the sex industry. Another piece, according to the correction, "misstated the political backdrop of the economic recession that preceded the good times that were the setting of `Friends.’"
A personal favorite, though, is the 2004 column that mentioned Adm. James Stockdale. As the correction said, "The admiral ran as an independent in 1992 with Ross Perot, not as a Republican in 1996 with John McCain, who was not a nominee." Um, yeah.

Then John Cook of Reference Tone went back and collected all of Stanley’s corrections since 2001. They’re listed here. Here’s what Cook, a former television writer for the Chicago Tribune, writes:

I immediately assumed that Rosenthal merely had it in for Stanley, a star of sorts on the TV beat who inspired envy among some critics (until a couple months ago, Rosenthal was the Sun-Times’ TV critic). So I Nexised "(byline)Alessandra Stanley and correction appended" and–my god. The woman is clocking corrections at more than a monthly rate. And they are stupid, stupid errors. Still, somehow I don’t get the sense that anybody’s writing any "we have to stop Alessandra Stanley from writing for the Times–now" memos.
…In the interest of brevity, I only went back to 2001, when Stanley started writing incorrect things about television, and I made them really tiny. In Stanley’s defense, her overall correction rate for that period is a not-quite-appalling-but-still-kinda-large 11 percent–she’s got an 89 percent chance of being right! Her rate for the past year is a disconcerting 14 percent, or a one-in-seven chance of being wrong.)

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Tagged , , | Comments Off
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