Regret the Error

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.

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