December 16, 2009 – 8:00 am
Thanks for being a regular reader. You can check out the award-winning Regret the Error book here.It’s a depressing job, but somebody’s got to do it. Below is my annual round-up of the year in plagiarism and fabrication. The good news is that there were fewer incidents than in 2008. Please email me if I’ve [...]
As you’re no doubt aware, a photograph purporting to show the successful test firing of four missiles by Iran was revealed to have been manipulated. In fact, only three missiles were successfully fired. The image, provided by the Iranian government, was distributed by Agence-France Presse and used by many media outlets. You can view some [...]
The website of German newspaper Der Spiegel recently issued a retraction for an article that claimed IKEA had a habit of naming inexpensive items after Danish towns. (High end items were named after Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian towns.) As the retraction explains, the story was based on a report in a Danish newspaper that turned [...]
This story has already blown up, but here is the official Times Editors’ Note: 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 [...]
February 29, 2008 – 12:07 pm
Roy Greenslade has the background on the above image: This award-winning photograph, showing a herd of endangered Tibetan antelopes apparently undisturbed by a passing train on the controversial Qinghai-Tibet railway, has been exposed as a fake. The image was widely hailed in China as a symbol of harmonious co-existence between man and nature. But photographer [...]
January 8, 2008 – 8:00 am
John McIntyre, the Baltimore Sun’s assistant managing editor for the copy desk, has written an excellent blog post about plagiarism and fabrication. McIntyre is the language and usage guru at the paper. He uses that knowledge base to offer up a list of ways to spot a plagiarist or fabulist. These should be provided to [...]
December 4, 2007 – 8:00 am
From Roy Greenaslade of the Guardian: Last Tuesday I carried a report headlined 11 relatives of Iraqi journalist killed. It now transpires that the story, widely carried in the United States, was false. Dhia al-Kawaz, editor of the Jordan-based Asawat al-Iraq news agency, has since admitted that his claim that gunmen had killed 11 of [...]
December 3, 2007 – 9:28 pm
After four-and-a-half months of re-reporting, long bouts of silence, and tangling with the US Army and various publications and bloggers, The New Republic today published a lengthy article by editor Franklin Foer that attempts to offer the magazine’s final word on the veracity of columns written by Scott Thomas Beauchamp, its Baghdad Diarist. We’ll skip [...]
November 15, 2007 – 8:00 am
In a Nov. 13 story, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that Paris Hilton was praised by conservationists for highlighting the problem of binge-drinking elephants in northeastern India. Lori Berk, a publicist for Hilton, said she never made any comments about helping drunken elephants in India. Link From the original article: GAUHATI, India (AP) — With [...]
October 26, 2007 – 6:00 am
Blair J. Parker, a sports reporter at the News Leader in Staunton, Virginia, was fired on Tuesday after an internal investigation revealed she “fabricated at least four stories and plagiarized from other stories on the Internet.” Parker was suspended last week after a story she wrote was revealed to have been made up of parts [...]
January 25, 2007 – 8:00 am
WENN ran a story in it’s fourth feed on 19 January 2007 headlined “MATHEW KNOWLES FUMES AT HOLLYWOOD ‘RACISM’”. We are advised by Mr Knowles’ lawyers that comments attributed to Mr Knowles in the story were in fact not made by him and we’d like to take this opportunity to apologise unreservedly to Mr Knowles [...]
January 22, 2007 – 8:00 am
A correction from the paper’s sports reporter: A deep apology is in order to Peetz girls head coach Kristen Hamil and her team as she was completely misquoted in Monday’s report of Peetz and Merino. In fact, I never spoke to the coach after the game nor over the phone about the game. To quote [...]
An item in Tuesday’s People column on Page 4A contained incorrect information obtained from WENN Celebrity News on IMDB.com that Oprah Winfrey would be taking part in a documentary series in which she would live in a tough Chicago neighborhood for a month. Winfrey will not appear in any such series, and WENN has retracted [...]
