Torontoist exposed a case of localization gone mad in Post City Magazine, which distributes editions in different Toronto neighborhoods. In an misguided effort to make its March cover story hit home with readers, editors altered the lead paragraph to fit the different neighborhood editions, thereby fabricating a scene. The lead graph from the story: Reading [...]
Oopsies…our bad! On Wednesday, along with several other media outlets, UsMagazine.com erroneously published a story attributing quotes to Sarah Palin; in a supposed radio interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, the former Republican Vice Presidential nominee was quoted bashing Christina Aguilera's botched rendition of the National Anthem at Sunday's Super Bowl. In response, Palin, 46, [...]
Lawrence Wright’s cover story in the current edition of The New Yorker reports on the Church of Scientology … Wright tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross about the detailed fact-checking process his article went through — The New Yorker assigned five fact checkers to the story and sent the Church of Scientology 971 fact-checking queries before [...]
In the Jan. 10 issue, in the story "Web TV Series Targets Myths About Gays," a sentence should have read, "Paula Mitchell, who is not gay, is featured in the premiere episode…." Report an error
An editorial error crept into a passage in Jeff Mann's article on bear culture (Sept.-Oct. 2010). The offending sentence reads: "These proto-bears did not relate to the wellgroomed urban gay lifestyle; nor did they find in conventional masculinity many qualities worth preserving." It should end with: "they found in conventional masculinity many qualities worth preserving." [...]
Gawker has exposed a nasty practice at health and fitness publisher Rodale: … A tipster tells us that Zinczenko "copies and pastes" old Men's Health articles for his "Eat This, Not That" column for Yahoo! Health that runs under his byline. So we ran his prose through a search engine. We discovered that Zinczenko—whose cult [...]
The table in "War's overlooked victims" (January 13th) mistakenly blamed the Indian army, rather than Pakistani forces, for 200,000 rapes in 1971. We apologise. Link Report an error
Ken Auletta's latest article in the New Yorker — a long feature about the new AOL — set off a lot of online chatter. One statistic in particular was highlighted by the Consumerist and Business Insider. The former writes: A New Yorker profile this week details how 80% of AOL's revenue comes from subscriptions, and, [...]
Late this week word began to spread on websites, TV, Twitter, and Facebook that there is a new, 13th sign of the Zodiac. Thought you were an Aquarius? Maybe not anymore. The Huffington Post pushed the story hard. They even built an app to help you see which of your friends have a new sign. [...]
In the September/October Elms, the article "Lies, Damned Lies, and Stats" misreported the amount of money mistakenly thought to be grossed annually by the drug trade. It is $500 million. Link Thanks, Chris! Report an error
Schumpeter last week poked fun at a firm called "Trendwatchers" ("The status seekers", December 4th). The firm's real name is trendwatching.com. We're sorry. We hope this isn't the start of a new trend of incompetence on our part. Link Report an 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 includes a new introduction. Error of the [...]
Two articles have recently been published in Money Marketing making accusations that Barclays has deliberately delayed the payment of cheques of a number of its customers as part of a corporate strategy to enable it to offer its own investment services. Following further investigations of these allegations it has become clear these claims are not [...]
In the Feedback item "Current Home Loan Bank System Works," on page 8 of the Nov. 17 issue, an editing error caused the omission of the word "not" in this sentence: "While these are worthy goals, they should not be done at the expense of the mission the banks serve so well today." Link Report [...]
This one has already rocketed around the Internet, but if you missed it here's a summary from Salon: … writer Monica Gaudio, who was surprised to learn this week that the small culinary magazine Cooks Source had lifted her five-year-old story for medieval cookery blog Gode Cookery entitled "A Tale of Two Tarts" wholesale for [...]
If you're a would-be plagiarist looking for a place to pilfer, I'd advise you to think twice before stealing from Slate. Two years ago, Slate's Jody Rosen busted a Texas weekly for plagiarizing. And last week, another Slate writer, Grady Hendrix, revealed publicly that his work has been stolen by a magazine, India Today. Both [...]
From an AP story about this Vanity Fair article: A writer for Vanity Fair has acknowledged a case of mistaken identity in an unflattering article about Sarah Palin in the magazine's October issue. Reporter Michael Joseph Gross describes Palin's youngest son, Trig, being pushed in a stroller by his older sister, Piper, before a rally [...]
In the August 26 edition, we mistakenly published a headline which stated that the Court of Appeal had upheld a claim of malicious falsehood against Asda. This was not the case, and we apologise unreservedly to Asda. In fact, the Court decided only that the claimant, Ajinomoto, may continue to pursue its claim. Link Report [...]
In this year’s FP500 issue of the Financial Post Magazine, The Independent Order of Foresters was incorrectly identified as one of the five worst-performing companies, in terms of declining annual revenue, among Canada’s 500 largest corporations. In fact, The Independent Order of Foresters’ 2009 revenues substantially increased from 2008 to 2009. The Financial Post Magazine [...]
We get a lot of letters at National Geographic. Recently we received several from readers insisting that William Lascelles’s photograph on the February 2010 Your Shot page was a fake. Our readers were right. The Your Shot rules specify, “Please provide only the original, unmodified camera image.” Lascelles submitted a nicely composed picture showing a [...]
The raspberry scone recipe on pg. 42 in our March 2010 issue (“Going Gluten-Free”) contains spelt flour Although many people with gluten intolerance (like BabyCakes’ Erin McKenna) can eat spelt flour without problems, it can make others side and is unsafe for celiac disease sufferers. We apologize for the error. For gluten-free recipes, visit naturalhealthmag.com/qlutenfree. [...]
We seem to be having a little trouble with our geography… the Matterhorn is of course on the Swiss-Italian border (1 May, p 17). Issaquah is in Washington, US (1 May, p 25). The US deserts we mention in our article on leaf shape are in the West, not the Midwest (8 May, p 6). [...]
The Canadian Magazines blog took note of the editor’s letter in a recent issue of Reader’s Digest Canada. That’s because editor-in-chief Robert Goyette took time to lay out some numbers that communicate the value of the magazine’s fact checking department: “In this issue, for example, they checked approximately 9,000 facts, consulting 458 sources (including experts [...]
Zoo magazine of England issued this tweet apology yesterday: And here’s some background from the Guardian: The magazine reader who was told by Zoo agony uncle Danny Dyer that he should “cut his ex’s face, so no one will want her” has expressed his outrage at the magazine. Celebrity advice-giver Dyer told Zoo magazine readers [...]
A report from the U.K.’s Press Gazette: A woman and her partner accepted “substantial” damages from Take a Break magazine over a story which alleged that they conspired to get her former lover jailed by giving police false information. Mrs Joyce Pinfield and partner David Valentine sued over a story which appeared in the magazine [...]
