As a way of enticing you to head over to the new blog, I today published the 2011 edition of the Year in Media Errors and Corrections, my annual roundup of the best of the worst in journalistic error. Go over and read it, and let me know what you think!

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 during the chat, and I hope folks will share others I may have overlooked.

Come have your say, and chat about some of the best of the worst. I’ll even share a few choice corrections!

The headline is I’ve joined the Poynter Institute as a member of its adjunct faculty, and this blog will be moving to Poynter.org. This is the culmination of a discussion between Poynter and me that started back in August.

I’m tremendously excited about this because, for the first time, it means I can spend the majority of my time writing for Regret the Error (and the other great blogs at Poynter.org), while also developing training programs focused on accuracy and verification, and contributing in other ways to the Institute’s work. I’ll continue to focus on accuracy, errors, verification, misinformation, and related topics such as transparency and accountability in the press.

One of the frustrations I’ve had with running this site is it’s never been more than a sideline. My day job has always been elsewhere, meaning I couldn’t jump on news quickly, or devote time to longer, reported pieces. I’ll now be able to do that, and a lot more, too. One of the best parts? The vast majority of the work I produce is going to be available free of charge. And that work will be produced in conjunction with the great and knowledgeable people at Poynter.

In terms of the nuts and bolts, my agreement with Poynter means this site’s archives will be imported into Poynter.org for the duration of our relationship. (This initial agreement runs until the end of 2012.) That change, and the redirection of the URL, will happen in the new year. But as of Monday, December 19, all new Regret the Error posts will be found at Poynter.org/category/latest-news/regret-the-error/. My RSS feed will move there as of the 19th, so no need to reset your subscription.

Apart from that, I will continue to be involved with OpenFile, the Canadian online news startup I helped launch in 2010. I am shifting to an editorial advisory role from my current position. I advise another Canadian news startup, Spundge. It’s in private beta and is building tools to enable journalists to discover and manage real-time news and information. I help with product development as the company’s journalist in residence. I also write a weekly column for the Toronto Star. (It highlights the week’s most notable media mistake.)

I will continue to disclose these relationships when writing or commenting about related topics or issues, and I will work to avoid any conflicts of interest. I will always err on the side of disclosure.

Finally, I want to thank all of you who have read this site over the years, and those of you who send in corrections and errors. I value your contributions and attention, and my promise is that these changes will provide you with the best content you’ve ever seen on this blog.

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 sentiments were hurt. We will not be taking any more articles from this writer. The article has been removed from the website Link

The same apology appeared on Pakistan News Today. Here’s where the offending article originally appeared. It’s now a 404 page, though Google news has this excerpt:

For example, Maulana Ishaq’s sermons on Shia-Sunni unity (given in Urdu), which have hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube, are heartening. They discourage Shias from hurling abuse but also admonish Sunnis from being emotional about respect and …

I contacted Saleem Ali, the author, for additional details and he said he objects to the removal of the piece. Ali is a professor of environmental studies at the University of Vermont. From his email reply to me:

This was a case of being bullied by some religious zealots who kept calling any criticism of ritual “hate speech.”
While some language was insensitive and i apologized for that — it was by no means “hate speech.” I dont approve of their decision to remove but can understand it in Pakistan’s tough media environment.
You will note the comments under the retraction that majority of readers did not think it should be removed.
I reposted the article on my blog — with an image to show the kind of ritual I was criticizing and also a preface with context and apology for the particular word usage.

He offered additional detail on his blog, writing that the piece “was a test of free speech in Pakistan and it is clear that the country is still stuck in a time warp of religious hypersensitivity.” Also from his post (emphasis his):

In the rush to write we can all be sometimes negligent and I recognize that the choice of words in describing some of the rituals was insensitive but certainly not hateful. To show due respect and in a spirit of amity I have removed the language which described the state of the mourners in the procession as “high on testosterone” (and God knows what else).” In retrospect this was indeed an inappropriate statement and I apologize unconditionally for use of that statement.

Ali told me via email that “this became an issue of personal safety as well.” He said he was subject to verbal attacks on Twitter, had his Wikipedia page vandalized, and that some people wrote letters to the president of his university to try to get Ali fired.

“The university of course realized that these accusations were baseless and actually offered me police protection (not that I need it in Vermont!),” he said. “However, given the high rates of kidnappings of writers in Pakistan such bullying and defamation is a serious issue. I have family in Pakistan and this has caused us sleepless nights for the past few days.”

Update Deceber 13, 2011: Ali also wrote about the incident for the website of Foreign Policy.

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 as Charlotte Bronte contained factual inaccuracies. This article, with its related comments, has been removed from our website (Being Charlotte Bronte, 3 December, page 12).

Why would the paper remove the entire story? It’s rare to see the Guardian take this course of action. With a bit of digging, it became clear that the story was removed because the premise was false. The woman, Lyn-Marie Cunliffe, does not dress like Charlotte Bronte in the way portrayed in the story.

As a result of the incorrect reports, she has spent a lot of time fighting back against a series of press reports that presented her as someone who always dresses in period costume, is living in a “time warp”, and may also occasionally confuse herself with Ms. Bronte. (The Daily Mail ran a picture of Cunliffe in costume at McDonald’s. Lord know why she agreed to do that…)

Let’s sample some of the articles that are still online (the Daily Telegraph removed its piece).

From the Daily Express:

SHE is a 21st-century housewife with a husband and two grown-up children.
But Lyn-Marie Cunliffe spends every day dressed as her heroine – Victorian author Charlotte Bronte.
She doesn’t wear modern attire even when grabbing a bite in McDonald’s.
The 49-year-old harboured a lifelong obsession with the Jane Eyre author’s works before deciding three years ago she wanted to live in a time-warp.

The Daily Mail:

Many of us dream of wearing the beautiful costumes from period dramas like Downton Abbey… however few would go quite as far as donning them every day.
But romantic fiction-lover, Lyn-Marie Cunliffe, has taken her obsession with Victorian literature to the extreme – by living her modern life dressed as her heroine Charlotte Bronte.
The 49-year-old loves the 19th century author so much that she dresses like her all the time – even on trips to the supermarket.

And from the now-scrubbed Telegraph piece:

Lyn-Marie Cunliffe, 49, loves 19th century author Charlotte Bronte so much she dresses as the famous author all the time – even while doing her supermarket shopping. The mum-of-two dresses in the home-made smocks whilst doing the school run …

The story originated with the Caters News Agency, which seems to specialize in quirky and sensationalized accounts of real people. Here’s the lead of one of its recent stories:

A pretty student has made a mind-blowing recovery – after her head EXPLODED.Stunning Jade Lucas, 20, almost died when a huge cyst in her brain filled with fluid – and exploded when surgeons drilled open her skull to operate.

You can also have lots of fun scanning the headlines. A sample:

WOMAN WAS SCARED OF STAIRS
PREGNANT ROADKILL CRAVINGS
NAP TIME COULD KILL MY BABY
LETTUCE ADDICTION DIAGNOSIS

Lettuce addiction!

So perhaps Cunliffe should have done a little due diligence before agreeing to the interview. That said, she claims she was misled. This is from a subsequent report that detailed her outrage at the original story and those that followed:

She said she had been told the article would be about tourism and her business Abigails Ateliers. She said she had approved a different version of the story and had broken down in tears when she had read what was eventually printed.
“I have spent three years building up my business and now I am afraid it is ruined,” she said. “I spent a lot of time building up my online presence and now when you put my name in to a search engine there is a story about a crazy lady who thinks she is Charlotte Bronte.”

It’s pretty low if the agency promised approval on the story and then switched it out. Of course, it’s strange to offer approval in the first place…

Cunliffe has been blogging about her ordeal (see here, here and here, for example). She also spent a lot of time over the past week contacting newspapers and other outlets to get them to correct their errors. Some have been responsive, many have not. This has only added to her frustration.

Cunliffe eventually heard back from the journalist at Caters, who said it was the papers who took the tale to the extreme. Here’s what Cunliffe wrote:

Not only have Telegraph and Guardian both clearly stated it to be untrue but Caters the original source of the story has distanced itself from the two remaining stories.An email from Tammy Hughes of Caters who was the person who interviewed me has made clear that “any mistakes are the result of the newspapers themselves

So perhaps the agency distributed the version she had approved. It’s not exactly clear at what point the story morphed into “This wacky grandma dresses like Charlotte Bronte all the time. Watch her eat a hamburger in period costume!”

I’m sure the folks at Caters could come up with a much better line than that. In fact, you probably won’t be surprised to learn some of the offending papers got very punny with their headlines. The Mail: “Do you come Eyre often?” The Express: “The Full Bronte!”

Advice for Responding to Inaccurate Reports

One valuable thing to come out of this is a blog post from Cunliffe that offers good advice to anyone who feels they have been wronged by a press account. She starts by encouraging people to “take a deep breath ,move away from any telephones ,mobile phones and keyboards,do not send any letters .”

Also take time to “vent ,cry ,shout break some crockery if needs be ,give yourself half and hour ,or one hour if your going to phone friends.You have every right to be upset,Be honest with yourself however about any mistakes you have made and consider them and how to avoid them in future.”

Once that venting and analysis is over, Cunliffe said it’s time to get down to the business of requesting corrections:

Now get to a keyboard,contact the newspapers politely and point out their “mistakes” at this point assume that you are dealing with honest people who have made a mistake do not be accusatory.

Read minutely the article in question ,check it for any and every mistake,this may be very hurtful and upsetting but the more discrepancies you can point out when refuting the sptry the more likely you are to be listened to

Next point out the same mistakes to anyone or any site who has posted links to an online article.

Next put out your side of the story be concise ,Social network sites and twitter are your allies here ,they provide a forum for any one however unknown to air their point of view.

Cunliffe recommends reading comments on the relevant articles (“but dont be obsessive”) and “only answer those making wrong assumptions and ensure that each page of comments contains a comment on your side of the story ,be polite and if your comments are removed email the site to pint out that they are supposed to allow anyone who has a story written about them scope to reply,this doesn’t always work but may .”

Valuable advice. Shame about the way she gained this expertise…

From Dan Froomkin’s piece at Nieman:

Experts in journalistic ethics are encouraging reporters to take a more critical posture going forward.

“I think professional journalists have an absolute obligation to make lies transparent,” said Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics at the Poynter Institute.

The first step is “to do the reporting so that you can with authority point out that this is an act of deception,” McBride said. With the Romney ad, that was easy; the accompanying press release provided Obama’s full quote.

Step two, McBride said, is to assign blame.

“Professional journalists need to follow up and figure out who in the campaign is responsible for this,” McBride said — “and keep at it.”

“We have to call that sort of thing out,” Geneva Overholser, director of USC Annenberg’s School of Journalism and a former Washington Post ombudsman, wrote in an e-mail. “Journalists did that, last week, but it seems to me it needs to have been even stronger. This was such a blatant act of deception. Treating it just like any other fact-checked ad, so many of which contain something mildly misleading, is itself misleading.”

I encourage you to read the whole thing.

The second piece is a post by Brendan Nyhan at Columbia Journalism Review. (Disclosure: I’m a columnist for CJR.) Nyhan, an assistant professor at Dartmouth College, is doing some of the most interesting academic research into misinformation, and he’s now writing regularly for CJR. He looked at how some publications dealt with the Romney ad. Then he offered some advice on the best way to combat the misinformation:

… A better approach would be for reporters to characterize the accuracy of ads in their own voice and to invoke non-partisan experts like PolitiFact. In some cases, it may even be possible to find credible sources on the side of the candidate airing the misleading ad who are willing to state the truth. For instance, WMUR’s Sexton briefly paraphrases a GOP strategist conceding that Romney’s ad is misleading: “Republican political strategist Mike Dennehy says it definitely appears as though Obama’s words are taken out of context.” This approach might be especially persuasive to Republicans who are inclined to trust Romney and distrust the mainstream press.

Still, it’s important to be realistic about the effectiveness of this sort of fact-checking. My co-author Jason Reifler and I have shown in our research (PDF) that fact-checking frequently fails to reduce misperceptions among the ideological group that is most likely to hold the misperception and in some cases makes the problem worse (what we call a “backfire effect”). In this case, reporters should not expect to convince skeptical readers that ads they support are false.

Nonetheless, aggressive fact-checking can provide reputational incentives (PDF) for elites to make more careful claims.

Earlier this year I wrote a CJR column about the backfire effect, and how it presents a challenge for journalists:

We present facts and evidence, and it often does nothing to change people’s minds. In fact, it can make people dig in even more. Humans also engage in motivated reasoning, a tendency to let emotions “set us on a course of thinking that’s highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about”.

These two important cognitive effects can have a significant impact on society and debates in the public sphere. They also end up negating some of the debunking and reporting work done by the press.

*Correction December 2, 2011: The original headline on this piece misspelled debunking as “debunkng”. The first sentence also used the Canadian spelling of “across”. I use US spelling on this site, so I corrected that as well. I regret the errors, and thank rogerogreen for spotting both!

This offers an opportunity for me to explain how we handled the situation. I’m not saying we did it perfectly. I’d be eager to hear comments from readers about anything we may have overlooked or handled poorly.

As a starting point, here’s the text of the apology that was published:

Around 2:45 p.m. today, we published a story about Jericho Upshaw, a Halifax man charged with first-degree murder, and his association with the North End.

It relied on two sources who said they had encountered him in the neighbourhood on several occasions. Unfortunately, the story was wrong: we had the wrong Jericho. The details in the story were about another young man with the same first name. Our two sources had seen Upshaw’s photo in a local paper and identified him as the man they had encountered in the North End. They were mistaken, and we were wrong in publishing the story.

Within about five minutes of posting the story online and sending out a tweet about it, we realized we had the wrong Jericho. We removed the story from our site and deleted the related tweet.

Our practice is to not unpublish content. We don’t want to erase the record; we prefer to correct it.

But in this case, the story was based on a mistaken identification by two sources. It was built on the information from those two sources. As a result, we felt it was essential to remove the story and publish this explanation of what went wrong. We also redirected the URL from the mistaken story to this blog post in order to ensure that anyone who finds that piece of content will understand why it was removed.

On behalf of OpenFile Halifax, I apologize for this error and will do everything I can to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.

Neal Ozano
Editor, OpenFile Halifax

This is the kind of situation we journalists dread.

“My heart sank,” said OpenFile editor in chief Kathy Vey in an email to me today. “Neal had asked me to look over the story for legal issues, because it was a murder case. There weren’t any but we had a much more basic problem. We named the wrong guy.”

The story was based on totally incorrect information. It shouldn’t have been published. So what do you do now that you know that? I hate unpublishing content; it should only be done in very specific circumstances. In my view, this was one of them.

The story itself was completely incorrect. Once we knew we had the wrong person, there was nothing left in the piece that offered value to readers. So it had to come down — and we had to replace it with something as soon as possible.

I worked with Halifax editor Neal Ozano and editor in chief Kathy Vey to draft the apology. We also contacted our tech team to alert them that we would need to redirect the URL of the unpublished story to the new blog post. That way, anyone who found their way to the offending story would be given an explanation of what what happened, of why the story was gone. Sending people to an error page is not acceptable. You have to make it easy for them to understand what happened.

The apology itself also needed to be clear about what the mistake was, how it occurred and what action we took once we realized our error. Again: help people understand what went wrong. Be clear. We also had to be honest about the fact that it was a failure on our part. You can’t just blame your sources. It was published on our site. We needed to accept responsibility and offer a clear apology.

A final consideration was the fact that our OpenFile Halifax Twitter account tweeted a link to the story. So as soon as the post was live and URL redirect was working, we tweeted the link to the apology from the same local Twitter account. That was then retweeted by me, Kathy Vey and by our national OpenFile Twitter account. Our Toronto news curator also retweeted it of his own accord. We wanted to make sure Twitter followers had a chance to see the apology.

As of today, the apology is still on the homepage of our Halifax site. (It will probably scroll off by the end of day.)

Now the job is to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We cover local news in our cities, but we don’t do a lot of crime reporting. So the story was a bit out of our comfort zone and area of expertise. We will be extra cautious with any stories of this nature in the future. We’ll also ask ourselves whether what we have is really news. We will add extra eyes to contentious stories.

What else should we do? What could we have done better? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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 guidance. I’m pleased to say that thanks to the Canadian Association of Journalists, we have the best and most comprehensive guide to help answer these and other important questions about online corrections.

Yesterday the CAJ released “Best practices in digital accuracy and corrections”, a set of useful best practices to help newsrooms make sense of online corrections. It’s the result of hard work by a panel created by the Ethics Advisory Committee of the CAJ. I serve on the Committee and also served on the panel, though I’ll note I was added after the group had already done some great work.

I hope journalists the world over will read the document and use it as a basis for developing policies and practices. If you have feedback, I’d love to hear.

I wrote an accompanying article to go with the best practices document. Read it here. An excerpt:

For several decades, newspaper readers in the U.S. and Canada have found the day’s corrections tucked away on page two of their paper of choice. This placement became a de facto standard after the New York Times began the practice in 1972. Newsrooms followed the Times’ lead.

Today, in 2011, we have yet to see a similar moment that standardizes the placement, wording and handling of online corrections. There are a myriad of questions when it comes to correcting online content, and news organization continue to struggle with best practices. At the same time, online errors spread father and faster than ever before. They speed across social networks and are deposited into search engine caches and databases large and small.

It’s essential that news organizations establish best practices for online corrections and digital accuracy. That’s why the Canadian Association of Journalists asked its Ethics Advisory Committee to create a panel to do so. The panel was chaired by Toronto Star public editor Kathy English and included Bert Bruser, Tim Currie, Rod Link, Shauna Snow-Capparelli, Scott White and myself.

The result of our work, “Best practices in digital accuracy and correction,” was publicly released this week. I encourage all journalists to download and read the document.

In addition to a set of clear and actionable best practices, the report provides useful (and interesting!) background on the challenges of online accuracy and corrections, and a look at what leading news organizations are doing. It offers much needed clarity for newsrooms when it comes to online accuracy and corrections …

First, Plommer shared that the paper’s corrections work is more focused on online than ever before:

Increasingly, in recent years, corrections’ priority has gone to online content, and I see no sensible alternative to this, because the digital database is the Guardian’s most accessible permanent archive, and one with instant global reach. This is where most people will see the original mistake, and where a corrected version stands the greatest chance of being spotted. Having the right version on the web also seems the best way to prevent us and others repeating an error in future stories.

The web is live, and impatient; corrections need to keep up. On our website’s corrections and clarifications page, a selection of online repairs is pulled together and steadily updated so that a rolling log is created throughout the day.

She explained that the paper’s print corrections column has primarily focused on correcting errors made in the print edition. However, that’s about to change (emphasis mine):

Enclosed in its finite space, the newspaper column is a window on to some of our correcting and clarifying. To date, it has mostly confined itself to making amends for errors published in the newspaper, on grounds that it would seem odd to explain web-only mistakes that lovers of the fish-wrap Guardian might never have clapped eyes on. This probably still makes sense, but from tomorrow, the exclusion zone will be breached so the paper column can point – in headline form – to some subjects corrected on guardian.co.uk. Word-for-word headlines should allow an easy web search, for anyone wanting to know more about what was corrected. The aim is to give a better taste of the work being done by many editorial departments to ensure an accurate record – and to make the column better reflect the Guardian’s range from newspaper to multimedia site.

Nice work by the paper to think about how it can spread its corrections between print and online, and help make readers aware of mistakes.

But that wasn’t the only news Plommer had to share:

Meanwhile, a new web page – entitled accuracy and standards – now brings together, under one digital roof, information on the guidelines, system of scrutiny, and other tools through which the Guardian and Observer aim to reinforce the business of getting things right, and being answerable when this objective is not met. It is found at www.guardian.co.uk/info/page/accuracy-and-standards.

The above link is a landing page that aggregates corrections from the Guardian and Observer, the readers editors columns, and lots of information about standards and policies at the papers.

The tweak to the printed corrections column and this new landing page demonstrate that the Guardian and Observer continue to think about how they can evolve and publicize their corrections. That’s one reason why they continue to be leaders in this field.

Oh, and I course need to mention that a correction was later added to Plommer’s column:

This article was amended on 28 October 2011. The original said that “the Guardian’s website was born in 1999″. This has been corrected because several Guardian sites were launched between 1995-1998. It was in 1999 that a unified and augmented site, Guardian Unlimited, was launched. The column above has been corrected, and an item will appear in the Corrections and clarifications column.

Note that the online correction specifies when it was added to the content. I see too few news organizations adding this to their online corrections.

His successor, Patrick B. Pexton, has now weighed in with a blog post that looks at recent errors in the paper, and also quotes an anonymous message from a former* staffer. From the message:

I have been reluctant to write this e-mail. But I can no longer hold my tongue. The quality of copy editing at the paper is abysmal. Yet again, while reading a story, I have found another error — a ‘they’ where it should have read ‘the’ — that literally made me stop reading the story and write this e-mail.

Unfortunately, it’s not a rare occurrence — countless stories and blogs with words left out or misspellings or grammatical errors. Is anybody reading what goes on up on the Web site or in the paper?

Pexton cites three causes of error:

First, mathematics is at play here: Fewer editors plus much more copy equals more mistakes. The Washington Post is not just a print publication anymore — far more copy, from stories to blogs, exists online than in print. The print edition is a fraction of what editors edit every day.

Second, copy editors (multiplatform editors, in today’s parlance) also now deal with material for mobile devices and tablet computers. Each of these four platforms — print, online, mobile, tablet — has different procedures and may require distinct headlines and captions; a story can be prepared by the copy editor not once but four times.

Third, mistakes occur more frequently online than in print, generally, because online copy goes through fewer editors. Stories headed into the newspaper go through more editors. But online errors are easier and faster to correct. Print is still forever. Readers take mistakes in print more seriously than online errors.

He ends with this: “Something has to be done to shake up the copy editing system at The Post so it doesn’t let mistakes like this weekend’s get published. It’s too important to the credibility of The Post.”

Looking back at what Alexander had written, I was reminded the paper had already shaken up its copy editing system. Alexander’s final column mentioned mistakes at the paper. After that was published, there was this response from Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli in a Q&A with readers back in January:

The ombudsman is right that there have been too many careless errors lately–typos, grammatical errors, silly factual mistakes. I don’t want to make excuses, because we shouldn’t tolerate these sorts of errors. But by way of explanation I will say that we have made a number of changes in our processes in the last couple of years and are putting in a new editing system that will further change workflows for editors.

So is the new editing system not fully in place? Is it in place and not working? Have things actually improved compared to a couple of years ago? I encourage Pexton to get some answers to these questions. (And for Post staffers to contact me or add a comment.)

Also: Check out Erik Wemple’s take on Pexton’s post.

*Correction October 25, 2011: I forgot to put the word “former” in front of the word “staffer” when referring to a message that had been sent to Post public editor Patrick B. Pexton. This gave the incorrect impression the message he was sent came from a current employee of the paper, rather than a former one. I added the word in the sentence. Thanks Doug!

In typical Politico fashion, they moved quickly after being alerted to a problem with one of Marr’s stories. The New York Times emailed Wednesday night; Marr had resigned by Thursday and the editor’s note went online that night. Politico treated this with the seriousness it required. Its two top editors, John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, were frank in saying, “Material published in our pages borrowed from the work of others, without attribution, in ways which we cannot defend and will not tolerate.”

They also made this declaration:

Our standard at POLITICO is to be candid with ourselves and our readers when we err, and to move swiftly, fairly, and transparently to ensure that we maintain public trust.

With the publication of that note, it seems, Politico feels it fulfilled its duty to need to be candid and transparent. Harris and VandeHei have since refused to answer any questions about what happened.

Erik Wemple of the Washington Post tried to get answers:

… Politico higher-ups refuse to discuss the matter. Politico Executive Editor Jim VandeHei declined to comment on whether the site would show its work by publishing a side-by-side comparison of Marr’s original pieces vs. the purloinees. Chief Operating Officer Kim Kingsley writes, “Sorry, but we are not going beyond the letter to readers.”

Actually, it looks like Wemple tried twice:

When asked if he could chat about these events, Jim VandeHei, Politico’s executive editor, e-mailed the Erik Wemple Blogger to announce that the editor’s note “speaks for itself.”
To a point. The note discloses the violations. It asserts Politico’s values. And it includes links to the stories in which a Politico investigation found problems.
What it doesn’t do is facilitate an assessment of what happened.

Julie Moos at Poynter tried:

Politico is not saying whether it has completed its investigation into Marr’s work after finding seven instances of plagiarism, or whether newsroom staff are provided (or will be provided) ethical guidelines to follow in their work. Chief Operating Officer Kim Kingsley said the Allbritton-owned organization will not comment beyond the letter to readers.

As did the Blaze:

When asked what he would tell readers who may have lost at least some faith in the publication’s credibility, Politico’s executive editor Jim VandeHei didn’t respond.

Other journalists probably tried and failed. (It’s worth noting Politico wasn’t so gun shy when Slate accused it of poor corrections practices.)

Imagine this scenario: a city department uncovers major misconduct by an employee and proceeds to issue a press release detailing the issue. Or, to bring it into Politico’s sphere, imagine a federal politician uncovers misconduct by a staffer and issues a press release.

Now imagine the politician refused to answer any additional questions from the press.

“I’m going to let the release speak for itself,” they tell journalists.

Not acceptable. We in the press would push for answers. Politico would push for answers.

This is no different. If we won’t be accountable for our failings and worst moments, then we lose the legitimacy to demand accountability from others.

This basic sense of fairness and transparency is never more important than when “a friend and colleague,” as Harris and VandeHei described Marr, fails or lets themselves and others down. If we aren’t willing to take the heat and answer questions when things are at their worst, how can we demand that of others?

The editor’s note hints that Marr was popular and well liked in the newsroom. (“Marr is a friend and colleague who has produced much outstanding work here and elsewhere.”) I’m speculating, but I get the sense part of the reason for Politico’s silence is they want to protect her. That’s a natural reaction when it comes to a colleague you’ve grown to like and respect, even if they break your rules and bring dishonor upon your organization. It’s okay to to be human and to feel something. It’s okay to admit that, too.

Jack Shafer wrote that these situations call for an editor with “a heart like leather. Not freshly tanned leather—all supple and yielding like a baby’s bum—but like an abandoned baseball glove that’s been roasting in the Sonoran Desert for five or six years. Only those who are hard of heart can properly deal with the plagiarists who violate the journalistic code.”

Yeah, be tough. Tough like an abandoned baseball glove to do the right thing — and then tough enough to answer questions about something that hurts your tanned leather heart.

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 piece of content. Meaning: you can’t also find them on this corrections page anymore.

Why the change?

This is the second time I’ve made note of Salon’s corrections page. The first was in 2005 when the site removed the link to its corrections page from the homepage. Now, six years later, it’s eliminated corrections from its corrections page. Not a good trend.

I’d prefer to see news organizations increasing the availability of online corrections, rather than reducing it.

Good people of Salon, I call upon you to put the corrections back on your corrections page, and restore the link form your homepage.

The live blogs were some of the worst offenders. Here’s what the New York Times called its coverage:

Note the iPhone 5 language in that intro text. It’s a done deal, as far as the Times is telling its readers. Here’s The Guardian:

Note the photo caption. The iPhone 5 is here, now let’s guess about the features!

No.

I get that there’s big competition to attract the massive Apple-related search traffic on a day like today. Sure, some folks will search for iPhone 5. But maybe they’re doing that in part because the media treated it as a foregone conclusion?

Declaring there to be an iPhone 5 before it’s actually announced (or not) is wrong on several fundamental levels.