… Before digital technology unsettled both the economics and the routines of book publishing, they explained, most publishers employed battalions of fulltime copy editors and proofreaders to filter out an author’s mistakes. Now, they are gone.

– via “What Typos Mean to Book Publishing,” a post from Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times. I’m also quoted.

Jon Krakauer’s Three Cups of Deceit—his thorough, intricate takedown of Greg Mortenson’s fraudulent book and charity—has been downloaded 70,000 times by users of byliner.com. That’s terrific news in more ways than one. The problem is, Mortenson’s first book sold more than four million copies. Math isn’t my strongest suit—that would be my reasoned, measured approach to criticism—but I believe that’s a ratio of about 57-to-1 between the fabulists and the factualists.

Unfortunately, it feels more and more like fiction is winning the war against non-fiction, that sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, lies have been slowly eroding the truth. Mortenson is probably the biggest name to have been exposed for his expansive imagination, but he’s far from alone in using it. In fact, the non-fiction book industry in particular seems poised for a steroids-and-baseball kind of reckoning.

… Maybe it’s time that the truth become a weapon instead. Maybe Krakauer’s takedown of Mortenson is the start of a larger correction. Maybe this business needs a few more heads on the pikes at the castle gates. It will be a painful and ugly and possibly futile process. But if baseball’s experience taught us anything, it’s that playing make-believe can last only so long. Slowly, eventually, inevitably, the numbers put to lie the fantasy. Once they become lop-sided enough, once the math stops adding up, the numbers become all the proof you really need.

–via Son of Bold Venture, the blog written by Esquire writer extraordinaire Chris Jones.

It pains me to point out that we recently published an item that should never have been published. A recent installment of Comics Panel featured a review of the book Genius Isolated: The Life & Art Of Alex Toth. This afternoon, a reader contacted me on Twitter alerting me to this item on the site ComicsComics. I am sorry to say it is accurate. One of our Comics Panel writers wrote the review despite being unable to acquire the book for now sadly obvious reasons. It should go without saying that this goes against every standard to which we hold ourselves at The A.V. Club.

I don’t want to speculate on the writer’s motivations, but I can say that in no way was the publisher of the book, IDW, involved. This sort of behavior is absolutely unacceptable, and we will not be working with the writer again in any capacity going forward.

We’ve always asked you to trust us. And we believe that one breach in ethics is all it takes to break that trust. I want to offer my apologies for this incident and my assurances that we will take every measure to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

Has this writer produced other work for the A.V. Club? And if so, is the Onion going to examine his/her previous contributions for problems?

Error of the Year: Cooks Source Theft

Unless you’re new to the Internet, you probably have an idea of what I’m talking about. As a reminder, here’s a recap I wrote for the Toronto Star:

Five years ago, writer Monica Gaudio published an article explaining that the good old American apple pie predated the United States by several hundred years. She even included a couple of delicious olde tyme pie recipes.

Gaudio’s was apparently a timeless piece of writing because it was reworked and published under her byline in Cooks Source, a small American culinary magazine. Slight problem: Gaudio had no idea her writing was being reused. She emailed the magazine to express her disappointment, and the ensuing response from editor Judith Griggs has become the stuff of Internet legend.

Griggs acknowledged that pilfering the work was “my bad” and spoke of her knowledge of copyright laws. She then set her finger a-waggin’.

“But honestly Monica, the web is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we just didn't 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it!,” Griggs wrote, employing quotes at an "alarming" rate. Also, the web is not public domain. Those cat pictures actually belong to people.

Griggs wasn’t finished, explaining that, “you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing … We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!"

Things got a little crazy from there. Gaudio’s post about the theft went viral, Cooks Source was inundated with emails and phone calls, and the press piled on. Advertisers began to flee.

Aside from the extremely poor judgment of the editor and the virality of the mistake, there’s another big reason why this incident is elevated to 2010’s Error of the Year: Amid all the mockery and insults directed at Griggs and Cooks Source, people engaged in the serious work of seeing if the magazine had stolen other work. Soon, a public Google spreadsheet became a central repository for other suspected incidents of theft. As of this writing, the spreadsheet contains over 160 Cooks Source articles that bear a striking resemblance to work first published elsewhere online.

Last year’s Trend of the Year was fact checking; this year’s Error of the Year demonstrates how effective crowdsourced fact checking can be in today’s media world.

In the end, Cooks Source shut down as a result of the error and its aftermath — offering another argument for why this particular mistake was so remarkable.

Runner Up

In November, the Independent (U.K.) published a front page photo of a man in uniform with the headline, “Wanted for the deaths of 430,000 Jews. Evaded justice for 67 years. Died a free man.” The accompanying story was about alleged Nazi war criminal Samuel Kunz. Here’s the page:

According to reports, the man in the photo was actually a Croatian actor named Ljubomir Jurkovic. The Guardian got a quote from the Independent's editor:

Simon Kelner, the editor of the Independent, said: "We are investigating the provenance of the picture, but as yet there is no conclusive proof one way or the other, and our caption acknowledges there is always a measure of uncertainty with pictures of alleged Nazis from that era." The same picture, however, is easily located on website publicity material and reviews for the 2007 film, The Living and The Dead, set in 1993 during the war in Bosnia, with flashbacks to parallel scenes from the second world war in 1943.

As of this writing, the paper has not corrected the error, or offered any details about the photo.

UPDATE December 16: The paper finally published a correction/apology:

The picture above right illustrated a front page story about the death of the Nazi war criminal, Samuel Kunz, on 23 November. We have since been told that the image is not, in fact, that of Samuel Kunz, but the Croatian actor Ljubomir Jurkovic. We are happy to make the position clear and apologise to Mr Jurkovic for the error.

Additional Errors of Note

• ABC News’ Fake Toyota Test Drive
• Gerald Posner’s serial plagiarism
• Tommaso Debenedetti’s serial fabrications

Trend of the Year: Twitter and the Challenge of Real-Time Verification

There were numerous times over the past year when news organizations and individuals struggled with the real-time nature of news and information. At the forefront of this trend is Twitter, which was arguably the most noteworthy news platform of the year.

How can journalists, news organizations and citizens best filter, verify, distribute and otherwise manage the constant flow of verified and unverified information? There is no one answer, but it’s a question that popped up again and again in 2010. I’m biased, but it strikes me as one of the great challenges — and opportunities — of this new age of news and information.

We’re seeing many of forms of misinformation spread rapidly online and take hold in real-time. Whether it was an incorrect tweet about a volcano eruption in Iceland, a Washington Post editorial writer mistaking a fake Twitter account for the real thing, or people wrongly tweeting and retweeting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had been removed from Time’s Person Of The Year contest, we saw how the real-time nature of the online world causes problems and errors.

I’m not suggesting Twitter should be seen as a negative when it comes to news and quality reporting. (I love it and you should follow me here.) But its status as an emerging platform for reporting and the sharing and dissemination of information means that it is raising new issues and introducing new challenges and opportunities. As is the real-time web as a whole. Fortunately, the challenges are being met in part by some new initiatives:

• Truthsquad tested collaborative pro-am fact checking. (This website partnered with them on a recent fact-checking campaign.)
• A new product, SwiftRiver, launched to help people manage real-time verification.
• MediaBugs went live and began offering people a way to get corrections from news organizations. (I’m an unpaid adviser to MediaBugs.)

As for Twitter, here’s one suggestion: Since it’s so easy for mistaken information to be retweeted far and wide, wouldn’t it be great if Twitter found a way to enable people to issue a corrected retweet that could automatically ping all of the people who had passed along the misinformation?

Finally, allow me this plug: I recently joined with MediaBugs executive director Scott Rosenberg to launch ReportAnError.org, a new initiative to help spread best practices for online error reporting and correction. We hope this will help bring a level of consistency to the way online news organizations handle errors and corrections. Because, as surveys from MediaBugs and Columbia Journalism Review show, we still have a huge amount of work to do in order to get news organization to begin handling corrections in an effective matter.

And along those lines, if you spot an error in this post, please email me the details.

In his case to the Press Complaints Commission Dr Lewis says that the paper ignored the bulk of his comments and mangled his quotes to make it sound like he agreed that the IPCC had been talking rubbish – and ran the "story" under the headline "UN Climate Panel Shamed by Bogus Rainforest Claim." The article ended with credit for "research by Richard North."

The story was then zapped all over the world as "Amazongate", and as a result millions of people are now under the impression that the Amazon is in no danger.

I welcome the Sunday Times’ apology for failing to accurately report my views and retract the Amazon story. As several experts told them – their story was baseless. What I find shocking about this whole episode is that an article read out [loud] and agreed with me was then switched at the last minute to one that fit with the Times’ editorial line that the IPCC contained a number of serious mistakes, but actually ignored the scientific facts.

In our Saturday post about the California Democratic Party’s ad attacking Meg Whitman but masquerading as an “issues ad,” we described the abrupt ending to our conversation with CDP Chairman John Burton. Through his spokesman, Burton on Monday complained that he had been misquoted. Burton says he didn’t say “Fuck you.” His actual words were, “Go fuck yourself.” Calbuzz regrets the error.

In an article on February 3, we implied two thirds of Haitians drank goats’ blood while practising voodoo. We are happy to make clear this is not the case.

An appraisal on Dec. 31 about David Levine, the caricaturist for The New York Review of Books who died on Dec. 29, may have left the incorrect impression that the Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin, the subject of one of Mr. Levine’s drawings, was homosexual. The description of Pushkin as “a gay man” was a reference to his demeanor, not his sexual orientation.

A story on Page 1 of Tuesday’s Telegraph quoted a White House official explaining that a Q-and-A session with dozens of teenagers in Nashua High School North on Monday was “off the record.” However, the explanation about the talk being “off the record” was, it turns out, also “off the record” and should not have been quoted.

In a May 21 ”Slatest” item, Jessica Loudis mistakenly cited a New Scientist article as saying that male bats that performed fellatio on each other before copulation. The article stated that female bats perform fellatio on male bats during copulation.

In our November 24 article "Meredith Maran's New Look at Recovered Memories," we misquoted the author and erroneously made it appear as if she had multiple lovers during the period in the mid-1980s that is discussed in the story. We also misstated the publication date of her new book, My Lie: A True Story of False Memory. It came out in September. And the photograph of Maran was taken by Cori Wells Braun.

The Butte County District Attorney's Office clarified that Oroville mini-storage stabbing suspect Zachary James Ragan does not have a horn tattooed on his forehead. Rather, he has devil horns tattooed on the sides of his forehead.

At least a couple of dozen readers kindly wrote to point out that when I called Wall Street bankers “glutinous’’ in a Wednesday column, I probably meant “gluttonous.’’ I’d love to tell you otherwise, but I apologize for the mistake.

Tina followers went to town on a caption that appeared in early editions of Saturday's paper (Wealthy Swiss threaten to leave if their taxes are raised, 27 November, page 32). Among the examples: "I am pleased to read today that Tuna Turner may be seeking a move from the land-locked tax haven of Switzerland . . . My husband was querying whether this is the same singer who was previously partnered by husband Pike?"

Lilith’s astrology column for the week starting March 6 was wrongly published last weekend. We are republishing it today. The Herald apologises for any sense of deja vu readers experience this week.

An earlier version of this blog post said that Mr. Vangelakos touted taking out the garbage in the nude as a perk of living in an empty building. That was not correct. A different apartment dweller in California made that statement. We regret the error.

It was reported today that Kimberley Stewart-Mole is now in a lesbian relationship, having left her husband Mike Hollingsworth. We have been informed and accept Ms Stewart-Mole is not a lesbian or in a relationship with a woman and apologise for suggesting otherwise.

The May 17 Broadsheet post “Miss USA Stripping Scandal: How Shocking!” incorrectly stated that Miss Nevada Katie Rees lost her title after the emergence of a “hardcore pornographic photo shoot.” The photos in question were not actually pornographic. The story has been corrected.

A capsule summary on Friday directing readers to pictures of ugly creatures at nytimes.com/science left the impression that fish and crustaceans are not part of the animal kingdom. Many of them may be ugly, but they are no less animals.

Clarification: The main headline for an article in Sunday's Arts & Entertainment section about an American Repertory Theater production of "Cabaret'' did not intend to suggest that the relationship between Amanda Palmer, who stars in the show, and Steven Bogart, her former drama teacher and mentor at Lexington High School, who is directing the production, was anything but professional. As a second headline and the story itself made clear, Palmer sought Bogart to direct the musical because she admired his professional abilities.

In the Sept. 1 article "City councillor race grows crowded with two more entrants," it incorrectly stated that Joseph Molnar was a newcomer to municipal politics. Molnar was, in fact, previously a city councillor in the early 1980s. While interpreted as a comment on his candidacy, the quote from the brief discussion — "I've never done this before" — actually referred to Molnar's request for payment from the Sentinel-Review for an exclusive interview. The request was denied.

 

YESTERDAY, a news.com.au article incorrectly stated that the Star Trek starship USS Enterprise-E, otherwise known as model NNC-1701-E, was the successor to Captain Kirk's original USS Enterprise.

It has since been brought to our attention that the NNC-1701-E in fact came two models after Captain Kirk retired and was under the command of Captain Jean Luc Picard.

User "Your Mum's Lunch" led the charge of those who correctly pointed out that after losing the original Enterprise to the Klingons, Captain Kirk was given the Excelsior Class Enterprise-B as a stop-gap measure until the refit of the Enterprise-A was completed.

Kirk's last ship was the Ambassador Class Enterprise-C.

Enterprise-D and Enterprise-E were in fact, the first of the Galaxy Class models and were under the command of Captain Picard.

There were also some concerns about whether the incorrect use of the term "hyperspace" in describing warp drive technology may harm the original Star Trek concept, particularly the books.

News.com.au apologises unreservedly for the error.

There was no intention whatsoever to suggest Captain Kirk may have commanded the Galaxy Class Starships Enterprise-D and Enterprise-E.

Any damage to the Star Trek brand incurred by the use of the term "hyperspace" is regretful.

No malice was intended and a correction to the original article will be made.

We also agree that Patrick Stewart is a handsome man, a sentiment expressed by several readers.

Addendum – We're also sorry for any errors in this apology.

ON 21 July we published an article claiming that the video games company Rockstar Games were planning to release a version of their popular Grand Theft Auto video games series titled “Grand Theft Auto Rothbury”.
We also published what we claimed would be the cover of this game, solicited comments from a family member impacted by the recent tragedy and criticised Rockstar Games for their alleged plans.
We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication and did not contact Rockstar Games prior to publishing the story. We also did not question why a best selling and critically acclaimed fictional games series would choose to base one of their most popular games on this horrifying real crime event.
It is now accepted that there were never any plans by Rockstar Games to publish such a game and that the story was false. We apologise for publishing the story using a mock-up of the game cover, our own comments on the matter and soliciting critical comments from a grieving family member.
We unreservedly apologise to Rockstar Games and we have undertaken not to repeat the claims again. We have also agreed to pay them a substantial amount in damages which they are donating to charity.

On 7 March 2010, we published an article by Zoe Margolis. In part of the first edition of the newspaper and online, this article carried the headline, “I was a hooker who became an agony aunt”. This was written by the newspaper not Ms Margolis. We accept that Ms Margolis is not and never has been “a hooker” or otherwise involved in the sex industry. The wording of the headline was a mistake and seriously defamatory of Ms Margolis. We offer our sincere apologies to Ms Margolis for the damage to her reputation and the distress and embarrassment which she has suffered.

In an item in Amy Jenkins's column last Saturday, 'One big happy family three separate houses' (27 February 2010) Amy Jenkins wrote that Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton live in two separate houses next to each other and that the nanny and two children live in a 'third house in the same street'. In fact the entire family live together in a single home that is fashioned from three adjacent former artist's studios. The comment that this arrangement is 'not so much eccentric as chilling', is unfounded and we accept that Helena Bonham Carter is a caring mother and apologise to her for suggesting otherwise.

On Friday, October 30th, Cambridge News Online published an article stating that former Newsround presenter and BBC correspondent Lizo Mzimba had visited Cambridge to research a documentary, called Shamebridge, about the university.
Our story reported how an online student newspaper alleged that Mr Mzimba had been gaffer-taped to a wall by rowdy students while undertaking research.
The News now acknowledges that Mr Mzimba has never worked on a documentary of any kind about the university, and that he was not taped to a wall by students.
We would like to apologise to Mr Mzimba for any distress caused by the article.

The Tab would like to apologise to BBC Correspondent and former Newsround presenter Lizo Mzimba for making a considerable number of false and damaging allegations about Lizo’s professional and personal behaviour, in a series of articles published in October 2009.
The Tab now acknowledges that Lizo did not visit Cambridge to research a documentary aimed at exposing and embarrassing Cambridge students, and further acknowledges that he has never worked on a documentary of any kind about Cambridge or the University.
We fully accept that he was not ‘seen draping himself over a number of girls’; it was untrue to label him as a ‘sleaze’ and a ‘perve’; and we were wrong to accuse him of loitering around ladies’ toilets to support false allegations that his behaviour while in Cambridge was debauched.
The Tab also acknowledges that Lizo was not gaffer-taped to a wall in Emmanuel College; he was not forced to lock himself in a toilet following a confrontation with students; and he was not ‘bug-eyed and sweaty’ as a result of a night of heavy drinking.
The Tab apologised unreservedly to Lizo for the articles and the distress and embarrassment they have caused.

An article (9 October 2009), ‘Hunger striker’s £7m Big Mac’, reported claims that Mr Subramanyam was caught secretly eating burgers while on hunger strike during the Tamil protest in London, wasting significant police costs. We now accept that there was no truth in these allegations and we and other media have agreed to pay him damages and have apologised to Mr Subramanyam for the distress and embarrassment caused.

And from the Sun (U.K.):

OUR article of 9 October 2009 falsely alleged that throughout a 23 day hunger strike, Mr Parameswaran Subramanyam secretly ate takeaway burgers when dishonestly claiming he was on hunger strike in support of Sri Lankan Tamils, in a campaign which was policed at considerable expense and caused the police to waste public money.
We now accept that these allegations are totally untrue. Mr Subramanyam, whose sole aim has always been to promote the Tamil cause, did not eat any food at all during his hunger strike.
We apologise to Mr Subramanyam and his family for any upset and embarrassment caused and are paying him a substantial sum in damages.

IN Court yesterday, we apologised to Stephen Hesford former MP for West Wirral. On 17 October 2009, we published an article entitled “MP who took moral stance “was a sex pest”. The article reported on proceedings before the Employment Tribunal in Liverpool the day before brought against Mr Hesford by a former employee for sexual discrimination. The article also stated that a claim for sexual harassment had been made but wrongly implied that Mr Hesford was being accused of personally having sexually harassed his former employee and as such was a hypocrite having resigned a month earlier as a matter of principle as a parliamentary aide to the Attorney General. We accepted that there has been no suggestion of any sexual misbehaviour by Mr Hesford and that the proceedings against him were in his capacity as employer. We apologised to Mr Hesford and have paid him damages and costs.

Daily Star (U.K.):

IN The Goss column on May 25 we published an article "Fan saves Amy Winehouse from Russell Brand's Dad" in which it was stated that Ron Brand had made unwelcome and inappropriate advances to Amy Winehouse, as a result of which a fan had to intervene and slap him. On May 28, we repeated the allegation in the follow up article "Russell Brand's call to Wino".
We accept that Ron Brand did not behave in such a disrespectful way towards Ms Winehouse, with whom he is good friends.
We acknowledge also that the so-called "fan" has been cautioned by the police for assault. We apologise to Mr Brand for both articles.

Lawyer did not have a drug problem: A story published in some Thursday editions about Curtis Kyles, a suspect in the killing of Crystal St. Pierre, reported incorrectly that criminal defense attorney Paul Fleming had problems with drug abuse and prostitution. The story should have said that Fleming questioned a detective about whether St. Pierre had drug and prostitution problems.

This blog post originally stated that one in three black men who have sex with me is HIV positive. In fact, the statistic applies to black men who have sex with men.

It’s a rare and wonderful thing to see a news organization criticized for making too big of a deal about an error and correction made by one of its writers. The issue is usually the opposite—a call for transparency, rather than a plea to, well, shut up.

Bell councilman: In the Oct. 13 Section A, a profile of Lorenzo Velez, the only Bell City Council member not charged with a crime, described Bell as "a city dominated by blue-color Mexican immigrants like himself." It should have said "blue-collar."

I am sorry to disappoint all the readers who wished to apply for the position, but New Orleans does not employ a “sex assessor.” That was a misprint in Wednesday’s column. It should have read “tax assessor.” Slips don’t come much more Freudian than that.

We incorrectly used the word “homocentric” when what we meant was “male-centred” (27 February, p 36).

We screwed up.
And to Tom Collins, we’re sorry.
What was reported on this newspaper’s sports pages yesterday and on our Web site for much of the day on Wednesday was wrong.
Collins, athletic director at Ball State, did not apply for the AD’s job at Dixie State College. A Tom Collins did apply for that job, but it was a different Tom Collins, not Tom Collins of BSU.
But just as much as this is an apology to Collins, this is an explanation. This is your newspaper, and the way we see it, you’re owed that at least.
Reporter Doug Zaleski had been chasing a rumor for about a week and a half that Collins was leaving. That’s when a source had originally told him that Collins had applied for the position at the school in St. George, Utah.
Now, understand that these sort of out-of-the-blue rumors aren’t uncommon to us. So as we often do in trying to flush out the validity of a rumor, Zaleski called the local newspaper, in this case, The Spectrum, which covers Dixie State. What, he wanted to know, was its sports staff hearing? If anything.
That practice, you should know, is commonplace. We, for instance, get calls all the time asking if we know anything about this rumor or that.
Anyway, The Spectrum didn’t know anything about Tom Collins and, indeed, first became aware of him thanks to us.
Still, our contact with other sources led us to believe there was reason to keep chasing the story. There was no real reason to call Collins himself, yet, but enough suspicion to forge on…

Mr. Sorensen said he suspected the headline on his obituary would read: “Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy Speechwriter,” misspelling his name and misjudging his work. “I was never just a speechwriter,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 2007.

"Tonight we received an urgent email from the PR firm representing shithead Libyan Dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi‘s son, Saif al-Islam: We incorrectly reported Beyonce performed for him this New Year’s! She actually performed for Col. Gaddafi’s other shithead son, Hannibal.

… Col. Gadaffi is in fact a ranting, terrorist-backing shithead of truly staggering proportions. It is as if God literally took a pile of shit, fashioned it into the shape of a head, placed it gingerly on the neck of Muammar al-Gaddafi, then let him run a good-sized country using only the worm-addled brain contained therein. Not a “perception”: A cold, hard, metaphorical fact.

A previous post mistakenly claimed that “Nobody in America gives a shit about hockey.” In fact, two people in America and one person in England give a shit about hockey.

A photograph published in the Toronto Sun Friday incorrectly identified a person who has the same name as a dead drug dealer. The photo showed Shawn James, winner of a Harry Jerome Award in 2005 and a social worker with UrbanPromise Toronto, a Christian-based community initiative working with children, youth and single mothers.
He is very much alive and the error raised concern among the kids he works with at Thistletown Baptist Church.
James “operates an after-school program for children at Kipling and Finch Aves. and he has no criminal background,” wrote UrbanPromise executive director Brett McBride.
The story, however, was about the trial for the accused killer of another man named Shawn “Juice” James, slain in 2007. The Sun apologizes for the error.

On Tuesday, 1 June, 2010, The Times of Nigeria published a story entitled, “Archbishop Of Benin City Resigns Over Child Sex Abuse,” regarding the resignation of Archbishop Richard Anthony Burke from the pastoral care of the Archdiocese of Saint Louis Benin City, Nigeria.
The photograph used for the article is a photograph of Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, not of Archbishop Richard Anthony Burke.
We sincerely aoplogize to Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura and regret any embarassment our action may have caused him.
Management.
The Times Of Nigeria

IN our report on April 25 last of the fatal shooting of Eamon Dunne, a photograph was captioned to identify the subject as the late Paul “Farmer” Martin, a well-known criminal, who was shot dead in the Jolly Toper in August 2009.
Due to an error, the photograph was in fact of another Paul Martin (who is pictured above), who has no association with Paul “Farmer” Martin, or with any other person named in the report, or to the activities described, including the killing of Eamon Dunne.
We apologise to Paul Martin for our mistake in using his photograph to illustrate the report and in misidentifying him. We are happy to correct the position.

IN yesterday’s edition of the Irish Sun, we published a story about an arrest made by gardai in the investigation into the murder of innocent Noel Crawford.
The photograph accompanying the story was stated to be a picture of the late Mr Crawford but it was in fact an image of the late Limerick criminal Noel Campion.
We apologise unreservedly to the Crawford family for any distress caused by the error.
We would once more like to point out that Mr Crawford had no criminal record.

An earlier version of this post misquoted Mr. Remnick on his comparison between the book and a New Yorker article he had previously written. He said the book would not be a “pumped up” version of the article; he did not say that it would not be a “pimped out” version of the article.

The report, “From Russia with love ? for the party”, on page 6 of the Sunday Morning Post on April 18 misquoted Lilia Yanark as saying the Communist Party had destroyed Russia rather than modernising it. It should have quoted her as saying, “Russian leaders have destroyed the Communist Party instead of modernising it”.

In a feature looking at the subject of postnatal depression among fathers, we should have quoted Andy Maxwell as saying "a stay-at-home dad is still unusual – parenthood as a full-time role is still considered women's work". Instead, our shorthand version of the last part of his remark had him seeming to say "full-time parenting is women's work" ('There's no support for fathers', 9 September, page 10, G2).

ON 19 June 2008 we reported that Britain’s Next Top Model finalist Jasmia Robinson’s unnamed boyfriend, was in custody for allegedly stabbing a suspected love rival.
We wish to make clear that her boyfriend David Obanobi was in fact the victim of the knife attack and not the perpetrator and was not in custody.
We apologise to Mr Obanobi for the distress and embarrassment caused.

Owing to an editing error, we said that Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall slept with more than 1,000 women in a three-year period during the mid-80s. That was meant to be more than 1,000 a year, based on his estimate of an average of three such encounters a day, as stated elsewhere in our stories (A new flame: Hucknall apology to 1,000 women he bedded, page 19, 3 December; 'I feel a bit like the antichrist', page 3, Film & Music).

Corrections In “Chávez Is Losing His Grip,” we said that Venezuela’s population is 45 million, and that its inflation is 30 percent a month. In fact, Venezuela’s population is 29 million, and its inflation is 30 percent a year. NEWSWEEK regrets the errors.

Penguin pulped 7000 copies of the Pasta Bible (ISBN 9780143011071) earlier this month due to a typo that could be considered offensive … New stock will be available from mid-May. [Sally] Bateman said this ‘was a proofreading error, and we’ll be making every effort to ensure this doesn’t happen again’.

We know someone who knows someone who knows an anonymous someone that tells us that the pulped edition included the words: Freshly ground black people.

In the April 29 “Culturebox,” Jonah Weiner originally stated that Moses was rendered as a giant glowing dreidel. Moses was depicted as the Master Control Program from the film Tron. Who sort of looks like a giant glowing dreidel.

An article about edible flowers in Wednesday’s Taste section included some examples of flowers that are not edible. These flowers, mentioned in the story, should not be eaten: lily of the valley, iris, hyacinth and some species of jasmine (Jasminum sambac flowers are edible). Linden flower tea can cause heart damage with frequent consumption. The Sun regrets the error.

We used the wrong picture of a mushroom in yesterday's paper (Fruits of the forest, 16 September, page 7, G2). The photograph was not, as the caption stated, of the death cap, Amanita phalloides but of the false death cap, Amanita citrina. The advice is the same – don't pick or eat either, as the first is deadly poisonous and the second is horrible to eat.

A piece of correspondence on the letters page expressed the view that an attempt by Jewish activists on a sailing boat to break the sea blockade around Gaza this week had been important in "reasserting the Jewish tradition of standing up for the victims of injustice" (30 September, page 35). But due to an editing error, when a version of this sentence was rendered as the letter's headline a key element, the reference to victims, was missed out, so the heading read: Reasserting the Jewish tradition of defending injustice.

Thanks to Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, for sending it along.

Penguin pulped 7000 copies of the Pasta Bible (ISBN 9780143011071) earlier this month due to a typo that could be considered offensive … New stock will be available from mid-May. [Sally] Bateman said this ‘was a proofreading error, and we’ll be making every effort to ensure this doesn’t happen again’.

The bloggers at Meanjin have details on the nature of the typo:

We know someone who knows someone who knows an anonymous someone that tells us that the pulped edition included the words: Freshly ground black people.

Thanks, Kevin!

When Waldo Jaquith of The Virginia Quarterly Review discovered and published that Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, had plagiarized passages from Wikipedia in his new book, Free, it provoked a lively, and sometimes alarming, discussion of plagiarism.

Regret the Error has summarized the affair, and there are extensive comments on the matter at the online edition of The Virginia Quarterly Review.

One reader’s response at VQR: “Don’t care. Don’t care. Don’t care. This is more of the same garbage from academics discovering plagiarism and making a big stink where it isn’t due. Take a fine-tooth comb to any recent publication and start googling. I bet you find a lot more than this.” Another characterized the VQR article as a “witchhunt.”

While many students and even a fair number of journalists, as well as readers who “don’t care, don’t care, don’t care,” appear to think of the Internet in general, and Wikipedia in particular, as a storehouse of ready-made prose available for the taking, there are still old-school writers and editors and teachers who see this casual copying-and-pasting as theft or cheating. 

It is appalling to think that it may be necessary to restate to students and professional writers what constitutes plagiarism. But for the benefit of anyone who cut class that day, here is a short summary.

Sources: Readers are entitled to know where information comes from. Sometimes footnotes or endnotes are appropriate, and citation within the text can usually be accomplished without clumsiness. Plagiarism, which cheats the reader by failing to disclose sources, comes in two forms: misappropriation of ideas and misappropriation of exact language.

Ideas: Information that is generally known and widely available from multiple sources does not require attribution. You do not need to cite a source if you write that John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865. But if you write that he did so under the orders of Edwin M. Stanton, the secretary of war, you had better give the reader the source of your crackpot theory.

Language: If in recounting the laugh line in Our American Cousin — “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal — you sockdologizing old mantrap!” — that Booth used for cover, you then write: “The laughter and burst of applause almost covered the sound of a shot in the presidential box,” you had better make sure that the second sentence is also within quotation marks and attributed to David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln. 

Chris* Anderson, in apologizing for the passages in his book lifted from Wikipedia, explained that there was a problem with the publisher in arranging for appropriate citation. But citation was not the only problem. Exact language from another source should run within quotation marks or set off in a block of type as well as being sourced by an appropriate citation.

Perhaps it’s necessary to make this even more explicit:

Do not copy text from Wikipedia or any other source without indicating to the reader where it came from.

Plagiarism can be either deliberate or inadvertent. If inadvertent, it can result from carelessness — such as mixing one’s notes from sources with one’s draft — or from failure to understand what constitutes proper sourcing.

A fellow copy editor once detected verbatim, unsourced sentences from Web sites in a reporter’s copy. When questioned, the reporter said, “Yes, I got that from those sources. It’s background.” Improbable as the explanation of innocent error was — the reporter had earned a university degree, worked at another daily newspaper, and had attended an in-house seminar on how to avoid plagiarism — the management accepted it and kept the reporter on staff.

Now we have Chris** Anderson, an established editor and published writer, caught up in an embarrassment that he has described as an innocent error, for which he has apologized, and which he has pledged to correct. That is as it should be.

But he, and his publisher, should have known better. As should you.

* ** Correction July14: Chris Anderson was incorrectly referred to as "Curt Anderson" in the penultimate paragraph of this article. Thanks to Waldo for spotting this mistake. Update July 14: A commenter correctly pointed out that Waldo noted two occurrences of "Curt" in this post. Both have now been corrected.

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.

As some of you may have seen, VQR rightly spotted that I failed to cite Wikipedia in some passages in Free. This is entirely my own screwup, and will be corrected in the ebook and digital forms before publication (and in the notes, which will be posted online at the same time the hardcover is released), but I did want to explain a bit more how it happened and what we’re doing about it…

In my drafts, I had intended to blockquote Wikipedia passages, footnoting their URL. But my publisher, like many others, was uncomfortable with the changing nature of Wikipedia, and wanted me to timestamp each URL (something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Anderson page viewed on July 8th, 2008), which struck me as clumsy and archaic. So at the 11th hour we decided to kill the notes and footnotes entirely and I integrated the attributions into the copy.

In doing so, I went through the document and redid all the attributions, in three groups:

• Long passages of direct quotes (indent, with source)

• Intellectual debts, phrases and other credit due (author credited inline, as with Michael Pollan)

• In the case of source material without an individual author to credit (as in the case of Wikipedia), do a write-through.

Obviously in my rush at the end I missed a few of that last category, which is bad. As you’ll note, these are mostly on the margins of the book’s focus, mostly on historical asides, but that’s no excuse. I should have had a better process to make sure the write-through covered all the text that was not directly sourced…

Edward Champion has weighed in and suggests that Anderson’s transgressions extend beyond what was discovered by VQR. But others, including Anderson’s publisher, have accepted his explanation.

FishbowlNY managed to track down Waldo Jaquith, the VQR reviewer, and get him to explain how he discovered the Wikipedia passages:

For Jaquith, it all started with a parenthetical. During the passage from "Free" in which Anderson describes the saying "There’s no such thing as a free lunch," Jaquith noticed that something was amiss. "It mentioned Crescent City and then, parenthetically, said New Orleans," he said. "At first, I was thrown off. I thought that maybe that before it was called New Orleans it was called Crescent City and I was mad at myself for not knowing that."

The reference needled at Jaquith so he did some research. His first stop: Wikipedia. To his surprise, the Wikipedia entry for New Orleans only mentioned Crescent City as a nickname. So he Googled the citation just as Anderson had written it in his book. That’s how he found an entry for explaining free lunch on Wikipedia.

The Books of The Times review in The Arts on Feb. 26 and an article in House & Home on Thursday described the experiences of Margaret B. Jones, who said that she had been a foster child and gang member in South Central Los Angeles and survived to write a book about that life. “Margaret B. Jones” turned out to be a pseudonym, and her story a complete fabrication, as The Times reported on Tuesday. An article about how her publisher, and the newspaper, failed to discover the truth earlier appears today. Link

I
am distressed to find myself reported as participating in a "literary
spat", and as "pouring scorn" on an individual, comedian Peter Kay, for
whom I actually feel nothing but goodwill (Heard the one about the
atheist who scorned a comedian for his belief in a comforting God?
March 8). The explanation is as follows. I am one of those whom
reporters regularly telephone for a soundbite. Last week, I was fed a
quotation from somebody, previously unknown to me, who said he believed
in God because he found it comforting. Assuming I was one of a panel of
usual suspects being asked to comment on this rather common sentiment,
I gave my usual response.
Now it seems
that I was being set up by a hired publicity machine, so that I would
appear to be mounting a personal attack upon a particular individual
who is my rival for a literary prize. And I also learn that the
quotation they selected is an unrepresentative one from a book I
haven’t read (I look forward to doing so), which is competing with my
own for the same prize. I hope you will allow me publicly to apologise
to Peter Kay and wish him well in the competition.
Richard Dawkins
Oxford

The Guardian story that set it off:

It may be the least likely literary spat in history. Richard Dawkins,
the evolutionary biologist famous for his rottweiler attacks on
religion, has poured scorn on Peter Kay, the northern comic best known
for a gentle joke about garlic bread.
The comedian and the scientist
are rivals in the Galaxy British Book Awards, in which Dawkins is a
frontrunner for his bestselling atheist diatribe The God Delusion, and
Kay is nominated for his popular memoirs The Sound of Laughter.

The controversy erupted after Dawkins read an excerpt from Kay’s
autobiography, in which he wrote: "I believe in a God of some kind, in
some sort of higher being. Personally I find it very comforting."
The
believer-baiting academic responded with contempt. "How can you take
seriously someone who likes to believe something because he finds it
‘comforting’?" he said.
"If evidence were found for a supreme
being I would change my mind instantly -with pride and with great
surprise. Would I find it comforting? What matters is what is true, and
we discover truth by evidence, not what we would ‘like’." Kay, at
present appearing in The Producers at the Palace theatre in Manchester,
was unavailable for comment last night and his publicist declined to
respond on his behalf.
In fact, while his book has extensive
passages on religion, Kay rejects the Catholic church and disputes the
divinity of Jesus. The comedian, who was educated at a convent school,
writes: "I believe that a man called Jesus did walk the earth at one
time but I don’t think he was the superhero that the Bible makes him
out to be … I think Jesus was just an ordinary person, like me and
you."
He also criticises the teaching of the nuns at his school
in Bolton, referring to an episode in which pupils were taught about
abortion by watching a gory slide show and passing around a plastic
replica of an aborted foetus.
He writes: "[The nuns] bundled a
girl out of the hall when she informed them that her sister had had an
abortion. I half expected to see her head impaled on the school gates
at hometime – come to think of it, I never did see her again … shit!"
There
was consternation yesterday in the comedy world over Dawkins’s choice
of target. Steve Bennett, editor of the comedy website chortle.co.uk,
said: "I know he came from a Catholic school but most of the stuff in
the book from that is anecdotal funny stories. There were some nuns he
liked and some nuns he didn’t like. Peter Kay’s not an obvious person
to be at the centre of this sort of controversy. His stock in trade is
a cosy world of things we can all relate to, and I suppose a belief in
God is part of that cosy world."
It is not the first time Dawkins’s atheist militancy has encountered an unlikely opponent.
He
was criticised recently for describing Nadia Eweida, the BA employee
who refused to take off her cross at work, as having "one of the most
stupid faces I’ve ever seen".
The Phoenix Nights star’s memoirs,
which record his childhood and rise to the threshold of stardom, were
the celebrity publishing sensation of last year. The Sound of Laughter
sold a record-breaking 600,000 copies in the first two months after
publication and sales are now approaching 1m. It is in the running for
the book of the year and biography of the year awards.
Kay’s line
in Phoenix Nights: "Garlic bread – it’s the future, I’ve tasted it,"
was named best one-liner in television comedy in a poll last year…

The Nov. 28 book review "Pigskin Philosophy"
quoted author Michael Lewis’ assertion that NFL quarterbacks threw
7,583 passes in 1960. In fact, quarterbacks from two different
professional football leagues, the NFL and the AFL, threw that number
of passes in 1960, according to a statistician Lewis consulted. Lewis
says that he has alerted his publisher to the mistake; a correction
will be made in future printings of the book. The review also cited the
total number of passes thrown in 1960 and 2000 as an indication of the
increasing popularity of the passing game. That comparison, however,
does not account for the increase in the total number of games played
each season during that period. A more appropriate measure is the
number of passes thrown per game. The review has been corrected. Link

"We won’t be stopping publication of the book, but when we reprint it,
we will take the letter out," said Emma Mitchell, a publicist for
publisher Hutchinson. "We’re not panicking about it"

Wilson’s US publisher, the venerable Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is taking a different approach. From a story in Publisher’s Weekly Daily:

…FSG’s plans to bring out Betjeman: A Life in the U.S. in
December were thwarted by the bogus document; when the scandal broke,
the house already had brought in finished books from the U.K. to sell
in the U.S., which contained the fraudulent letter as well as incorrect
information regarding it. The solution, according to FSG senior v-p of
marketing and publicity Jeff Seroy, was to include an erratum note from
Wilson in all 10,000 copies of the book’s first editions, and to
correct the text (and omit Hillier’s made-up document) in all future
editions…
In his erratum note, Wilson comes across as a good sport, explaining
how he received the letter and his hindsight view: "I should have smelt
a rat when I wrote back to ‘Eve de Harben,’ an anagram of ‘Ever been
had?’" Keeping a stiff upper lip, Wilson ends with the declaration that
the "scurrilous forgery will be removed in any future reprints."

JK ROWLING has been forced to correct a plot blunder in a Harry Potter book — after fans spotted it.
The author credits Hermione Granger with 11 top exam results in the
first hardback edition of book six, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood
Prince.
But in book five — Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix — we are told she takes TEN examinations.
Publishers Bloomsbury have corrected the paperback edition to give Hermione nine “outstanding” and one “exceeds expectations” in her Ordinary Wizarding Levels.
In the uncorrected version, Harry gets seven OWLs with
honours, Ron also achieves seven, while Hermione gets ten
“outstandings” and one “exceeds expectations”.
One of the first fan websites to spot the error was www.mugglenet.com. It is believed to be the first blunder in the Potter series, which has earned JK, 41, more than £500million…
Bloomsbury admitted last night: “We can confirm there was an error.”
A publishing source said: “With a series like this it is inevitable a
blunder like this would occur. It is just remarkable it didn’t happen
earlier. It was only a small error and easily reversible.”
Hermione actress Emma Watson, 17, is a real-life brainbox. She got eight A*s grades and two As in her GCSEs.