As I announced last week, all new content for this blog is now being published on the new Regret the Error blog at Poynter Online. Please bookmark the URL, or add the RSS feed. I will automatically shift the previous RSS feed to the new RSS address after this post, so no need to resubscribe [...]
Today at 2 pm Eastern you should join me, Reuters’ Jack Shafer and my fellow Poynter person Mallary Tenore as we chat about 2011′s biggest journalistic errors. I’ve been working on my annual roundup of The Year in Media Errors and Corrections and have a bunch of candidates in mind. We’ll share the current finalists [...]
A little over a week ago, I wrote my final weekly column for Columbia Journalism Review. At the end of that column, I said I was ending my CJR column because I would be “taking my work to a new home soon as part of a larger announcement regarding my site, Regret the Error.” I’m [...]
An apology from the Express Tribune of Pakistan: We regret the inadvertent publication of the article titled “Shia-Sunni reconciliation” by Saleem Ali in our print edition of December 9, 2011 and subsequently on our website. The article was published without exercising proper editorial judgment. We apologise for the mistake and to our readers whose religious [...]
Here’s a case study in how a story can spread far and wide, causing anger and frustration for the person at the heart of the tale. I became aware of it thanks to this rather vague correction in the Guardian: A Weekend magazine article about a woman who for part of her working life dresses [...]
I came across two notable articles that both offer guidance on how journalists should handle (and debunk) misinformation provided by sources. Both cited a recent ad from the Mitt Romney campaign that included a falsehood. So, as the story from Nieman Watchdog Project asks, “When candidates lie, what’s a political reporter to do?” From Dan [...]
My main job at the moment is as editorial director of OpenFile, an online news organization operating in six Canadian cities. Late yesterday afternoon, I spent about an hour helping draft a blog post that would offer an apology and explanation for readers about why we had to remove a story just a few minutes [...]
When should a news organization correct or remove archival content? Where should online corrections be placed? How should readers be encouraged to report mistakes and request corrections? These are some of the common questions I’m asked about online corrections. I think a lot of news organizations continue to struggle with them, and to look for [...]
I’m in New York today participating in an event about fact checking at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. I kicked things off with a (very) quick look at the history of fact checking and what its future might look like. Below are my slides. You can follow along today on Twitter with the #FactFest [...]
Leslie Plommer is an associate editor in the office of the Guardian readers editor (ombudsman). She occasionally fills in for the editor by taking over the weekly column, as she did last weekend. Plommer shared a bit of news about the paper’s print corrections column, and announced a new webpage dedicated to accuracy and standards. [...]
At some point every newly appointed ombudsman/public editor will address the issue of errors and corrections. Often they come back to it again and again. The former ombudsman at the Washington Post, Andrew Alexander, is a good example. (See here, here, here). His successor, Patrick B. Pexton, has now weighed in with a blog post [...]
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 [...]
I’m taking some time off, so look for new posts on Monday. In the meantime, please send along any notable errors/corrections. Report an error
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 [...]
There are a few topics that every public editor or ombudsman will inevitably address during their tenure. Conflicts of interest and accusations of bias are bound to provide column fodder. Corrections and accuracy, too. And within the realm of corrections and accuracy, you can usually count on an ombud examining the tension between speed and [...]
I recently made an offer to my fellow journalists: if you create a personal accuracy checklist, I'll send you a free copy of my book. Checklists are the best tool for preventing factual errors. I want more of us in the press to use them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You [...]
I recently made an offer to my fellow journalists: if you create a personal accuracy checklist, I'll send you a free copy of my book. Checklists are the best tool for preventing factual errors. I want more of us in the press to use them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You [...]
I recently made an offer to my fellow journalists: if you create a personal accuracy checklist, I'll send you a free copy of my book. Checklists are the best tool for preventing factual errors. I want more of us in the press to use them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You [...]
I recently made an offer to my fellow journalists: if you create a personal accuracy checklist, I'll send you a free copy of my book. Checklists are the best tool for preventing factual errors. I want more of us in the press to use them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You [...]
This post is part of the Carnival of Journalism, a project that gathers together a diverse group of bloggers to tackle a specific topic. Here’s the current topic: The changing role of Universities for the information needs of a community: One of the Knight Commission‘s recommendations is to “Increase the role of higher education…..as hubs [...]
I dedicated my most recent Columbia Journalism Review column to the current debate about whether or not a news organization or journalist should delete an incorrect tweet. I also outlined how a Twitter correction function might work: User Controlled: First things first: It’s neither feasible nor desirable to have Twitter play a role in determining [...]
I'm taking a break for the holidays. Posting will resume on January 4, 2011. Have a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! -Craig Report an error
Stinky Journalism noted an interesting article by the U.K.'s Press Gazette. It reported that the Press Complaints Commission, the self-regulatory body for U.K. media, will play a bigger role in determining where publications place corrections and apologies resulting from PCC findings. From the story: The committee that oversees the Editors' Code of Practice to which [...]
