The common problem with fact-checking is a misplaced reverence for “expertise” as a substitute for hard-nosed reporting and independent evaluation. So here are a few friendly suggestions for better fact-checking: Reporters do not represent the establishment, they should be suspicious of it; politicians who seem reasonable may not be; politicians who depart from the Washington [...]
CORRECTION – An earlier version of this story referred to Cain having a ‘cedar-quality’ mustache. The proper term is ‘theater-quality.’ Link Thanks, James! Report an error
After receiving complaints from members of the gay and transgendered community, The Huffington Post removed a poll from its website that asked readers to vote on who has more of a “Tranny Look” between Sofia Vergara and Blake Liveley. The post/poll included quotes from the two women confessing that they each sometimes look like a [...]
PJ Media thought they had a huge scoop about aspiring Republican nominee Herman Cain. It relied on unnamed sources. It talked about a woman going home with Cain and waking up in his bed the next morning. It cited a source who said she saw the two get into a taxi. Here’s the offending paragraph [...]
An apology sent out by email to members of the IEEE and readers of its weekly Tech Alert email newsletter: Dear Members and Readers, Please accept our sincere apologies for the headline in today’s Tech Alert: “With the Arduino, Now Even Your Mom Can Program.” The actual title of the article is “The Making of [...]
A young reporter named Kendra Marr resigned from Politico last week after it was discovered she had plagiarized the work of other publications. She did it at least seven times. Politico’s top editors revealed the serial theft in an editor’s note published Thursday night. In typical Politico fashion, they moved quickly after being alerted to [...]
Salon’s online corrections page used to offer links to corrections going back several years. This was good and rather unique thing. Not anymore. At some (recent) point, the site’s corrections page was changed to remove all current and archival corrections. The page now contains boilerplate text informing readers that corrections are placed on the offending [...]
Reading the coverage leading up to — and during! — today’s Apple iPhone event, you’d be forgiven if you thought Apple had an iPhone 5. It doesn’t. The new phone is the iPhone 4S. And yet look at all of this iPhone 5 language in Google News: The live blogs were some of the worst [...]
Editor’s Note; An earlier version of this story included a comment erroneously attributed to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, criticizing the White House’s efforts at political messaging. Newsweek and The Daily Beast regret the error. The above editor’s note was placed atop a piece by Howard Kurtz.The original version of his story included this quote [...]
Via a blog post from the editor of ArchDaily, which had come under fire for plagiarising from Arch Record: … On September 18th, we featured a story titled “Harlem’s New Renaissance”. The article was taken from Jenna McKnight’s article “Harlem’s New Renaissance” featured on Arch Record on August 25th. ArchDaily’s article written by Irina Vinnitskaya [...]
In the Sept. 21 “Moneybox,” Annie Lowrey miscalculated a hypothetical scenario about how long it would take Mark Zuckerberg to become a trillionaire, saying it wouldn’t be possible within 50 years. Under the hypothetical (though highly unlikely) circumstances, he would reach $1 trillion well within 50 years. Link Report an error
This story originally misidentified the title of the Sir-Mix-a-Lot song that Sarah Palin sang along with. It is “Baby Got Back,” not “I Like Big Butts.” Link Thanks, Jim! Report an error
In a Sept. 15 “Science,” Daniel Engber mistakenly referred to the latest Transformers movie as Dark Side of the Moon. That’s the title of a Pink Floyd album. The movie is subtitled Dark of the Moon. Link Thanks, James! Report an error
On July 12, 2011, in an article titled “Detective to Sue News of the World Publisher,” we reported that Jonathan Rees murdered his former business partner, Daniel Morgan. This statement is not true, and was published by us notwithstanding that it is wholly incorrect. We did not contact Mr Rees before the article was published [...]
In an Aug. 11 “Slatest” blog post, Peter Fulham stated that Ellis Island is home to the Statue of Liberty. The statue is on Liberty Island. In the Aug. 8 “Well-Traveled,” a map mislabeled Germany and Austria. Link to both Report an error
As has now been reported in many places, several media outlets last week fell for a hoax study that claimed users of Internet Explorer have a lower IQ than people who prefer other browsers. The BBC, which covered the fake news, published a report today revealing the hoax: The story was reported by many high [...]
In the July 22 “Movies,” Dana Stevens originally and incorrectly stated that the childhood home where the lovin’ feelin’ came creeping in belonged to Jamie. It belonged to Dylan. Link Report an error
A variety of media folks got caught up in a false rumor today, after word began to spread that CNN had suspended Piers Morgan. Martin Bryant has a good roundup at the Next Web: The latest example of ‘think before you retweet’ emerged today when a false rumor spread like wildfire that British journalist and [...]
Via the Media Blog: Report an error
In a July 18 “Politics,” David Weigel misstated the number of Rebuild the Dream house parties over the weekend of July 16. There were 1,600, not 15,000. Link Report an error
Earlier this week the local CBS website for Philadelphia carried a report that people in that city could soon be ticketed for texting while walking. That initial article resulted in lots of coverage from places such as Gawker and Good Morning America. A screen grab from Google News shows some of the reports (and one [...]
On Monday July 18th, 2011, we posted the headline on our Homepage, “Cash cab host kills pedestrian.” The headline should have read “Cash Cab involved in fatal accident.” We take these matters very seriously and deeply regret the error. Link Here’s a related story that explains the incident in question. Thanks, Andrew! Report an error
Correction: the original version of this post indicated that [Tucson Catholic] Bishop Kicanas admitted to performing oral sex on West, which, clearly, is not the case. Kicanas merely asked the Board to spare West’s life. It was West’s former neighbor who admitted to performing oral sex on him. The post has since been modified. Link [...]
In my job as the social media editor for MediaShift, I’m used to fitting big ideas into tight spaces. But recently, in the fray of 140-character editing, I struggled to condense a curious statistic. Finishing up, I double-checked grammar, the link, and clicked "submit" as usual. It was retweeted more than 100 times see the [...]
Simon Dumenco objected after a piece he wrote for Ad Age was aggregated by the Huffington Post: HuffPo’s aggregation, titled “Anthony Weiner vs. Steve Jobs: Who Won On Twitter?,” consisted of basically a short but thorough paraphrasing/rewriting of the Ad Age post — using the same set-up (i.e., pointing out that Apple had the misfortune [...]
