In a July 7 “Culturebox,” Jason Zinoman stated that the Sidney Prescott character in the Scream movies is played by Courteney Cox. She is played by Neve Campbell. He also stated that The Fly (1958) ends with a shot of a fly with Vincent Price’s head. The human head does not belong to Vincent Price. [...]
My Columbia Journalism Review column for this week looks at the recently launched sports site Grantland and some of the problems that have arisen as a result of its lack of a proper feedback process. Here’s an excerpt from the column, and an accompanying Storify is embedded below: … Grantland as it exists today doesn’t [...]
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 [...]
In a June 23 “Brow Beat” post, Chris Wilson wrote that J.K. Rowling’s new Pottermore website would have 18,000 pages of extra content; the correct figure is 18,000 words. And: In a June 17, “Brow Beat” post, Chris Wilson stated that the Harry Potter character Bill Weasley is a werewolf. He was injured by the [...]
In the June 23 “Press Box,” Jack Shafer misspelled Jimmy in the name of Janet Cooke’s fabricated 1980 Washington Post article, “Jimmy’s World.” Link Report an error
… 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 [...]
A correction from the Fear and Loathing in Bioethics blog: A correction to an earlier posting is in order. The Merck that has just hired a new bioethics panel is not the Merck associated with the Vioxx scandal. The Merck that has hired a new bioethics panel is Merck KGaA, which is associated with the [...]
In a June 8 ” Explainer ,” Brian Palmer suggested that the French government had banned reporters from using the words Facebook and Twitter altogether. In fact, reporters are permitted to use the company names, just not as generic references to social media. Link It seems to me that a lot of news organizations made [...]
In a June 7 blog post and video clip, we reported a Dutch woman’s claim that she had her Facebook friends tattooed on her arm and showed video of the supposed tattoos. In fact, the story was an advertising stunt by a tattoo shop, and the tattoos weren’t real. Link Report an error
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 [...]
A correction to a story about MSNBC’s Ed Schultz and his recent outburst in which he called Laura Ingraham a “slut”: A typo in the first publication of this post had Schultz calling Ingraham a right wing “slug.” It was fixed. We regret the error. Link Report an error
Our May 2nd Spotlight highlighted Ohio’s investment in economic development. Unfortunately, the figure noted in that story, $1.4 billion for this year, is vastly overstated. According to the OH Department of Development, the state Strategic Business Investment Division allocation for 2011 is approximately $228 million. The 2012 allocation is approximately $225 million. We regret the [...]
Earlier tonight I watched as an interesting accuracy-related discussion flowed by on Twitter. It focused on tweets sent a week ago, when reports began to surface that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Here’s a recreation of the tweets, as best as I could manage: [View the story "A Twitter discussion about the New York [...]
Given the fact that journalists have been mixing up the names of President Obama and Osama Bin Laden for a good three years or more, it’s no surprise that the coverage of last night’s huge news included many of these slips. Here’s a sampler of Obama/Osama errors. This, from a local Fox affiliate, may be [...]
This screenshot of the Fox News website is making the rounds online (click for larger): Thanks, M-J! Report an error
A reference to the Muppets, originally included in this post, was taken out of context and has been removed. Apologies to Fozzie Bear & Co. Link Report an error
An amusing typo from a Kansas City NBC station (click for better view): It’s been fixed, but no correction was added. Thanks, Alex! Report an error
Several places, including Gawker and the Atlantic Wire, took note of the fact that Fox News’ website removed a bizarre and borderline disturbing article that seemed to link an Obama speech with a young man’s suicide.* From the Atlantic Wire: Fox News has scrubbed its website of an article suggestively commenting on the coincidental suicide [...]
From a recent automotive column published on Wheels.ca, a site run by the Toronto Star: In a recent column, we advised a motorcyclist who experienced a vehicle fire while travelling in New Mexico that he could notify the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of this event since it occurred in the United States. Subsequently, [...]
Because of an editing error, the April 7 "Good Word" stated that pompon was an alteration of the word pompom, rather than vice versa. "Pompon" is the hypercorrect word. Also in the same article, author Ben Yagoda originally stated that prescriptivists have been fighting on behalf of the "original" sense of disinterested (meaning "impartial") for [...]
An earlier version of this story carried an incorrect dateline and reported the wrong location for where Rep. Bachmann made her incorrect historical statement about Lexington and Concord. Link Even more meta? The headline of this piece is "For Michele Bachmann, a pattern of getting facts wrong." Thanks, Bas! Report an error
In a story posted March 8, entitled "Sports Agent Stole $300K From MLB Star," financial manager, Toni Chiricosta, was erroneously identified as being involved with Rodney Fernandez, a sports agent, who was charged with grand theft from Los Angeles Angel's first baseman, Kendry Morales. Mr. Chiricosta has not been accused of any wrongdoing and was [...]
In a Feb. 22 "Slatest" item headline, Meredith Simons accidentally omitted the letter o from the word account, which resulted in an unfortunate typo. Link Report an error
Word started to spread last week that quarterback Brett Favre might be joining the next edition of Dancing With the Stars. There were speculative articles by USA Today and ProFootballTalk, among others. But none of these articles included a quote from Favre, and no one from the show was on record as giving any credence [...]
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, [...]
