I was a guest on last week’s edition of the WNYC program On The Media to discuss the Wall Street Journal’s scrubbing of its editorial about the attacks in Norway. Here’s their intro for the segment: In the wake of the Oslo attacks, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial blaming the violence on Islamic [...]
A report from the New Zealand Herald: TVNZ current affairs show Close Up has apologised over an item it copied from a United States network. The piece, entitled Made in New Zealand, was virtually identical to an item on the American network ABC in January. Herald Sideswipe columnist Ana Samways revealed the similarities in an [...]
While the world is focused on the actions of the now-defunct News of the World (and possibly other British tabloids), on Friday eight British newspapers issued apologies for outrageous, prominent and defamatory front pages and articles that falsely painted Christopher Jefferies as a murderer. The Tabloid Watch blog has an excellent overview of the issue [...]
Our article of May 7 2011 “8st kick-boxing WPC scares off thugs” included a photograph said to be that of Richard Chadwick who was convicted of an attack on six people in Leeds, including bursting into one home and threatening to kill the occupant’s baby. The photograph was actually of Mark O’Brien who has no [...]
Seattle Weekly published a remarkable cover story last week. Over the course of more than 6,000 words, it made the argument that true crime author Ann Rule made a series of mistakes and false conclusions in her book, Heart Full of Lies. The book tells the story of the shooting death of Oregon pilot Chris [...]
Articles in the Guardian of Tuesday 12 July incorrectly reported that the Sun newspaper had obtained information on the medical condition of Gordon Brown’s son from his medical records. In fact the information came from a different source and the Guardian apologises for its error (The Brown files: How Murdoch papers targeted ex-PM’s family, 12 [...]
David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who launched a new column for Reuters this week. After his debut piece hit the wires and the web, Johnston realized he’d made a major mistake. The premise of his column was wrong. Reuters soon withdrew the piece and Johnston took the highly unusual step of [...]
On July 3, 2011, an item in the Naked Eye column referred to a play called The Table of Knowledge based on the ICAC investigation into Wollongong City Council. The item incorrectly stated that Michael Kollaras had a sexual relationship with town planner Beth Morgan. The Sun-Herald now acknowledges that any such allegation against Michael [...]
WENN acknowledges that it mistakenly facilitated the publication of unfounded allegations regarding the status and professional standing of Omar Amanat, a founding member of the board of directors of Summit Entertainment LLC, the independent studio behind the Twilight Saga trilogy of movies. We have now ascertained that Mr. Amanat not only controls approximately twenty percent [...]
On behalf of The Rhinoceros Times, I apologize for the offensive political cartoon in the June 23 edition of The Rhinoceros Times. The cartoon appears to be two black male prisoners using poor grammar talking about being in jail. The males are supposed to be two white men. The color that was used for these [...]
A report from Stinky Journalism: … the BBC, Time magazine, the Telegraph and other news outlets published stories about a dog in Israel being condemned to stoning in Israel. As the BBC explained, the hoax story: “It was reported that the dog reminded a judge of a curse passed on a now deceased secular lawyer [...]
Articles on the death of Curt Willi Jarant suggested that two family members, Gitta Jarant and her daughter Anke Anusic, had attempted to smuggle Mr Jarant’s corpse on to a flight from Liverpool to Berlin, thereby apparently committing a criminal offence of failing to give notification of death. That allegation was untrue, as was the [...]
… what happened Tuesday when stories started to come out of Liberty County, Texas, about "dozens" of bodies supposedly being found at a home is worth noting. It underscores again how we in the news media need to remind ourselves sometimes to slow down and let the facts become more clear before we rush to [...]
The Hockey News deeply regrets and retracts the publication of its June 9, 2011 story entitled: “Source: Craig Leipold to acquire additional 40 percent of Minnesota Wild if minority owner Philip Falcone forced out.” The story appeared on thehockeynews.com. The story was erroneous concerning the proceedings of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and [...]
A Macy’s advertisement featuring Miami Heat merchandise was mistakenly published June 13 on page 11D in some editions of The Miami Herald. We regret the error and apologize for any inconvenience. The offending ad was for Heat championship merchandise (click for larger): Kind of incredible, considering the Heat wouldn’t have been champions even if they [...]
Guardian articles about Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, a blogger on the subject of Middle East unrest, carried photographs purporting to show the blog’s author. In fact, the person pictured was Jelena Lecic, who lives in the UK. We apologise to her. An account of how these pictures came to be used appears in today’s [...]
The Chicago Sun-Times fired a critic after she left a concert early and proceeded to pull an Albom. Romenesko reports that, “Chicago Sun-Times veteran Paige Wiser was let go after her “Glee Live!” concert review in Sunday’s paper mentioned one song that wasn’t performed and described another that she didn’t see.” Wiser admits she made [...]
This is kind of strange. A website powered by one of Rupert Murdoch’s papers in Australia accidentally published a fake/placeholder story that detailed the marriage of Murdoch to one of his reporters. Adweek explains, via a report from the West Australian: A cub reporter at one of Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspapers accidentally posted placeholder text [...]
Denver Post sports columnist Woody Paige has apologized for using quotes gathered by SportsBusiness Journal and not attributing them to the publication. A report from Westword: Woody Paige wrote about one of his employers using a forum provided by the other one in “ESPN Empire One Great Story,” published in Sunday’s Denver Post. Problem is, [...]
Carol Wainio runs the Media Culpa blog, which frequently highlight errors made in Canadian newspapers. She also recently had a complaint against a columnist with the Ottawa Citizen upheld by the Ontario Press Council. She recently published a series of posts about Margaret Wente, a high profile columnist with The Globe And Mail, a national [...]
An excerpt of a report from Stinky Journalism about an incident involving a Kenyan newspaper: South African newspaper The Standard corrected its report that $10 million cash was lost in a Kenyan airport — well, sort of. StinkyJournalism wrote last month about The Standard’s $10 million cash story after a Kenyan journalist, Dennis Itumbi, called [...]
Patrick B. Pexton, the Washington Post’s new ombudsman, hasn’t been on the job long but he’s already written about an incident of plagiarism at the paper. Here’s the editor’s note that was added to the offending piece: This article in the April 17 Travel section included material that was taken without attribution from a documentary [...]
Statements contained in an article published on 7 March, headed “Babies who are born at 23 weeks should be left to die, says NHS chief”, were wrongly attributed to Dr Daphne Austin, who is a medical consultant specialist employed by the NHS. They were made in a programme in which Dr Austin participated and were [...]
On May 15 we said Tim Henman was being paid £200,000 by the BBC for commentating at Wimbledon this year. In fact we have been informed that his fee will be substantially less than that. We apologise for the mistake and are happy to set the record straight. Link Via Tabloid Watch. Report an error
During the 1990s conflict in the Balkans, Serbian state broadcaster Radio Televizija Srbi (RTS) was basically transformed into a propaganda outlet. In order to try and repair the damage, the organization issued an apology on Monday. An excerpt: During the unfortunate events of the 1990s, Radio-Television Belgrade and Radio-Television Serbia in many instances in their [...]
