WBTV (Channel 3) apologized Saturday to the Rev. Billy Graham after the station erroneously reported the evangelist’s death.

Around 6:30 a.m. Saturday, a producer and director in the control room saw what they thought was a bulletin on the CBS network feed to its affiliates announcing Graham’s death, said Dennis Milligan, WBTV’s news director. Kristen Miranda, anchoring the newscast, was told by the show’s producer through her earpiece to announce the news, which she did.

Afterward, WBTV called Mission Hospital in Asheville, where Graham, 93, is recovering from pneumonia, and learned he was not dead.

Within 10 minutes of the original report, WBTV made an on-air correction. Milligan said the station planned to repeat the correction and apology on Saturday’s late newscast and early news today.

He said he was unable to find out Saturday what had been on the CBS network feed, but he said it could have been some kind of test or other content sent during downtime while the network was not providing programming.

Congrats to the station for doing a good job dealing with this mistake. To recap: they issued multiple on air corrections (three by my count), posted an apology on the station’s website, and placed an apology on their Facebook page. That’s a good job of making sure viewers know about the mistake, and the resulting apology.

Here’s the apology on the station’s website:

On Saturday during its early morning newscast, WBTV News mistakenly reported the passing of the Rev. Billy Graham. Our show producer read what he thought was a breaking news crawl about Rev. Graham on an off- air network feed.
He made the decision to air the information without checking it first. That was a mistake.
Within minutes, other staff members contacted the hospital where Rev. Graham is being treated, to find out that he is doing well in his recovery from pneumonia.
We made an on-air correction immediately.
Accuracy is the most important ingredient of any newscast. We at WBTV strive every day to make sure that the news we deliver is accurate, fair and useful to our viewers.
Today we made an unfortunate mistake.
We apologize to Rev. Graham, his family, the staff of Mission Hospital in Asheville where he is being treated and most of all our viewers.
We will be reviewing exactly what happened and we will take steps to make sure that it does not happen again.
– Dennis Milligan, News Director, WBTV

Just to reinforce why it’s good practice to repeat an on air apology, have a look at this comment posted on the station’s Facebook wall:

thank you for the public apologgy tonight at 11:30pm. everyone makes mistakes and I understand you’ll try to be the first for breaking news! it takes a lot of guts to do a formal public apology…. you’ll still are the best! thank you everyone for all you’ll do!

The commenter’s profile says he owns a lawn care company, so he appears unconnected to the station in any professional capacity.

Thanks, Randy!

Thanks, Daniel!

He’d been chasing down a story about a local puppy mill and came upon information that a number of huskies had been sent to a New York address. He called it up and found it was a meat market. He also spoke to a staffer who told him they sell dog meat.

Cue the investigative report:

The I-TEAM went undercover in New York City to see the Canine Culture Center, but found a meat market at the same address.
And as the I-TEAM found, a worker there says he only sells dogs to eat.

That was how it was written up on the station’s website. Problem? Schugel heard “dog” when he was actually being told “duck.”

After inspectors checked the market and found no dogs, the truth began to come out. The embarrassing error was soon being covered by the New York Post, the local Onion’s A.V. Club and by Minnesota’s City Pages. The latter reported the station scrubbed the report off its website and didn’t offer a correction (see my update below that notes the text report is online but the video was indeed scrubbed):

Oops.
Now, WCCO has completely scrubbed the story. What story? That dog thing? Oh, yeah. Uhm, early April Fool’s?
Since the news of WCCO’s colossal mistake broke in the New York Post, the CBS affiliate has disappeared any remnants of the story from its website. Neither the story or a follow-up post still exist, and the video story has also vanished without a trace.

Update Nov. 11, 20012011* 5:00 p.m.: Richard Prince filed a bug at MediaBugs to note that the station scrubbed the video report but that you can still find the text here. Prince also has more details in his report here:

WCCO has taken down the video of its story from its website — but kept the text posted, backdated with a 2008 timestamp — and has steadfastly said it has no comment.

Did the station backdate the story to try and hide it? I guess we won’t know for sure since they refuse to answer questions. Prince’s report also includes a statement from the the Minnesota Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. An excerpt:

WCCO cannot undo the harm inflicted by airing the story. However, the editors and managers of the station can improve their own credibility and the esteem of all professional journalists by being upfront and transparent from here on out. If a newsroom publishes an incorrect story, it is imperative to acknowledge the mistake and issue a correction and an apology to those the story harmed. Not doing so makes it harder for all journalists working to win the respect of the public they serve.

*Thanks to commenter Randy for spotting this typo.

After the report aired in May, Kevin Reynolds, the priest in question, was removed from his post with the church. He said his first mass since the broadcast yesterday. Hard to image how can imagine how he’ll be able to fully clear his name.

The apology was read out on air and is online. Here it is:

On the evening of the 23rd May 2011, RTÉ broadcast a Prime Time Investigates programme entitled “A Mission to Prey”.
Before this broadcast Prime Time conducted an interview with Fr. Kevin Reynolds, the then parish priest at Ahascragh in Galway.
This interview took place beside the parochial house after the annual First Holy Communion Mass.
During this interview allegations were made against Fr. Reynolds. He immediately protested his innocence and denied all the allegations.
Between the interview and the broadcast, Fr. Kevin Reynolds, through his Solicitors, repeated his protestations of innocence, asked RTÉ not to broadcast the interview and volunteered to
undergo a paternity test.
Prime Time duly broadcast the programme accusing Fr. Reynolds of raping a minor named Veneranda while he was a missionary in Kenya and fathering a child named Sheila as a result of this rape.
He was also accused of secretly providing funds to Sheila.
Both Veneranda and Sheila were interviewed in the programme to corroborate the allegations.
As a result Fr. Kevin Reynolds was obliged to stand down from ministry and was removed as the parish priest of Ahascragh. He had to leave his home and his parish.
He was compelled by the actions of RTÉ to institute High Court defamation proceedings to vindicate his good name and reputation.
RTÉ acknowledges that the material in the programme concerning Fr. Reynolds ought never to have been broadcast.
RTÉ now fully and unreservedly accepts that the allegations made by Prime Time against Fr. Kevin Reynolds are baseless, without any foundation whatever and untrue and that Fr. Reynolds is a priest of the utmost integrity who has had an unblemished 40 year career in the priesthood and who has made a valuable contribution to society in Kenya and Ireland both in education and in ministry.
RTÉ acknowledges the defamation has had a devastating effect on Fr. Kevin Reynolds, his family, his peers, his parishioners in Ahascragh, those in the diocese of Kakamega in Kenya who were aware of the allegations and all those who know him or of him.
RTÉ fully and unreservedly apologises to Fr. Kevin Reynolds for this defamation and deeply regrets the serious consequences suffered by him. He was entirely innocent of the allegations
broadcast about him.

The obvious question now is how this happened. The apology offers no explanation. What made RTÉ think it had the goods when it didn’t? Why didn’t it take Reynolds up on his offer of a paternity test prior to broadcasting the piece? And what made it finally realize how wrong it had been?

It was the most dramatic of footage with which to launch ITV1′s new current affairs show – pictures of the IRA supposedly shooting down a helicopter with weapons supplied by Muammar Gaddafi.
But the broadcaster on Tuesday admitted that the images used in the first episode of its new ITV1 series Exposure was in fact a sequence from a computer game, Arma 2.
ITV blamed a cock-up rather than a conspiracy for the mistake, which was first spotted by eagle-eyed games fans after the programme was broadcast on ITV on Monday night.
The incident will be seen as a huge embarrassment for ITV, which said it did have actual footage of the incident but the wrong footage was included because of “human error”.

That wasn’t the only mistake in the broadcast, according to the Guardian:

The programme contained a second error when it described footage of riots in Belfast as being from July this year when in fact the clip was six years old.

ITV issued a statement:

The events featured in Exposure: Gaddafi and the IRA were genuine but it would appear that during the editing process the correct clip of the 1988 incident was not selected and other footage was mistakenly included in the film by producers.
This was an unfortunate case of human error for which we apologise.

Here’s the relevant footage, via the Daily Telegraph:

Update September 26, 2011: Romenesko notes that Fox aired an apology during yesterday’s NFL broadcast:

Before we move on, I want to go back to Week 1, during the Atlanta-Chicago broadcast, when our production crew that was doing that game displayed an incorrect graphic. Now, the production team told our announcer Daryl Johnston that a taped video package that made air came from actual headlines concerning Bears quarterback Jay Cutler’s performance during last year’s NFC Championship Game. While in fact, they were not. FOX Sports regrets this mistake and apologizes to Cutler, the Chicago Bears organization and everyone involved.

The Jewish Defence League of Canada (JDL) will sue CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] for defamation, said the JDL’s leader, after the country’s most prominent news organization called it a terrorist group.

“This is a part of a campaign of defamation against people who are on the right wing,” said Meir Weinstein, head of the group. “Everybody who has attended one of our rallies and who has supported us is in the same boat with us: they’ve been defamed.”

He also was incensed that CBC, which, in the interest of balanced reporting, normally avoids using the word “terrorist” for even the most violent of groups, attached the moniker to his band of spirited but non-violent protesters, even if it was merely citing a government term.

CBC issued an on-air apology five days after the original broadcast.

“We want to correct and apologize for a mistake we made last Sunday. In one segment, we said the Jewish Defence League is a banned terrorist organization in Canada. The Jewish Defence League is not on the government of Canada’s list of groups or individuals identified as being associated with terrorism and we very much regret the error.”

Weinstein isn’t satisfied with the apology, noting that it aired on the Friday morning before the long weekend when viewership dips. He also wants “recognition as a safe, law-abiding, activist organization.”

Weinstein expects the group’s attorney to deliver a letter of intent to sue next week, and the JDL might also sue the reporter who made the statement, Bill Gillespie …

Very rare to see plagiarism and an on air apology in the broadcast realm. Be sure to watch the video at the above link. The TVNZ report is basically a frame-for-frame reproduction. And the script is almost word for word.

Thanks, Matthew!

It also caused the mayor’s office to work overtime to knock down this false information. Here’s a tweet sent by the mayor yesterday:

CBS has since scrubbed its original report and replaced it with one that includes some corrective information about walking and texting. But no correction.

Gawker updated its post to add the correct information. An ABC site also published a corrective report:

Have you heard that Philadelphia police will hand out tickets for texting and walking? Philly’s deputy mayor says that’s not true.

A report that texting and walking would be a ticketable offense from a local news station was picked up by a number of news networks and blogs overnight.

The stories quoted Deputy Mayor Rina Cutler.

However, when contacted by Action News on Tuesday, Cutler said that is not true. Furthermore, she questioned how such a law could even be enforced.

The Philadelphia Inquirer weighed in with a piece to explain how the incorrect information spread:

Philadelphia police are, in fact, cracking down on dangerous and distracting cellphone use as part of a larger education program aimed at drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians.

But the most a police officer can do to people texting while walking is to “remind them to be careful,” according to Mayor Nutter’s office.

Nutter spokesman Mark McDonald said he spent half his day fielding calls from the national media to douse the misinformation. Nutter himself felt obliged to Tweet the truth Tuesday morning.

“We got hammered,” McDonald said. “You just can’t imagine the calls from all over the place.”

… Media Watch accused Sydney newsreader Angela Pearman, and several other ABC newsreaders around the country, of faking that interview with John Lombard in Moscow. The allegation was repeated in our 20th anniversary special in 2009 and was until recently available on our website.
We’re now satisfied that in Angela Pearman’s case the allegation wasn’t accurate. She had interviewed John Lombard by telephone earlier that day. Her questions and his answers were recorded simultaneously in Sydney and Moscow and later edited together. Ms Pearman did not, as Media Watch alleged, deceive her audience.
Our belated apologies – better, I hope, late than never.

Via Stinky Journalism.

… 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 report. And at the very least, to be very careful about what we do say when a story is breaking.

If you haven’t heard, there were news alerts and Twitter posts from local and national news outlets late Tuesday afternoon that 20 to 30 bodies had been discovered on property near Hardin, Texas.

Click2Houston1, the Twitter feed from Houston’s KPRC-TV flat out said there was "Breaking News in Liberty County where dozens of bodies have been found near Daisetta." It had said it was told by the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office that "25 to 30 bodies were reported on a property at the intersection of County Roads 2049 and 2048."

The New York Times sent its Twitter followers this message: "NYT NEWS ALERT: Up to 30 Dismembered Bodies Found Near Houston, Reuters Reports."

Reuters, saying it was relying on "local media" reports, had reported that "Texas authorities find up to 30 bodies, including children."Within an hour, the story changed dramatically.

As The Associated Press writes this morning, "the investigation into a tip about multiple bodies being buried at a rural Texas farmhouse has now turned to the tipster after authorities turned up nothing in a search of the property." It seems that "authorities said the tip came from a woman claiming to be a psychic" and they took it seriously because of details she told them regarding the home and property. But they found nothing …

– via “‘Texas Bodies’ Nonstory Is Reminder To News Media: Slow Down,” a blog post from NPR.

Image via @jaredbkeller.

Time magazine got a statement from Fox News:

This past Sunday during ‘America’s News Headquarters,’ a graphics error was made during a segment on former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. The producer has since been disciplined and an explanation and apology will be made in the same hour next Sunday. Fox News regrets the error.

From a report by AFP:

During the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic’s decade-long rule, RTS was known for its unwavering loyalty to his regime, often labelling his opponents “traitors” or “Western-paid mercenaries”.

The board “apologises to the citizens of Serbia and of neighbouring states who have been the object of insults, slanders and contents that can be nowadays seen as a hate speech,” said the statement published on the RTS website.
The content of RTS programmes was deliberately designed to discredit the Serbian opposition and its leaders “as a part of the undemocratic regime’s propaganda,” said the board.

I’ve been cataloguing delayed apologies since the day I launched this site. This delayed apology from the Lexington Herald-Leader was among my first posts:

It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission.

For other delayed apologies, see these from two North Carolina newspapers (almost 120 years after the fact), and this from the Tallahassee Democrat.

Thanks, Matt!

Their report shows has video of the mistake, as well as a comparison of the two logos. The site io9 also has a report:

… Rather than show Team Six’s real logo, N24 displayed a fan-made logo for the Maquis, the anti-Cardassian rebel group that debuted on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This logo (which came from the fan site Maquis Forces International) is adorned with with three bat’leth swords, a phaser, and a grinning Klingon skull, the latter of which prompted N24 host Mick Locher to muse, “[Members of Team Six] don’t have the skull in their emblem for nothing.”

Whoops! …

Thanks, Miranda!

This, from a local Fox affiliate, may be the worst one I’ve come across (Update: actually, have a look at this video lower down in the post):

Reporting that President Obama has been killed instead of Bin Laden? Yeah, pretty bad. Then there’s this tweet from MSNBC correspondent Norah O’Donnell (thanks, Mallary!):

Gizmodo also has examples from the BBC and a different Fox affiliate than the one featured above. The Fox station later posted a story about all of the Obama/Osama mixups. It mentioned the other Fox affiliate as well as errors from CNN, the Modesto Bee, ABC News and Fox News. And after all of that, they admitted their mistake:

FOX40 also briefly had a graphic up with the wrong name. The original graphic talked about “OBAMA NATIONAL SECURITY ANNOUNCEMENT” and the B remained when it was changed to “OSAMA BIN LADEN.” Station management apologized for the error, as did the network anchors.

What else? Here’s a CNN typo talking about “Obama’s compound” in Pakistan:

Sky News declaring Obama’s death:

Update May 2: Here’s an example from NPR (thanks, Parker!):

Update May 3: A correction from the Charlotte Observer:

A front-page story in some editions Monday incorrectly referred to Osama bin Laden as Obama. In the same story, a photograph cutline wrongly said two aircraft hit the same tower of the World Trade Center. The planes hit different towers. Link

Update May 4: The South China Morning Post published this incorrect correction today:

In a headline on page A2 yesterday, the US president’s first name was erroneously given instead of that of Osama bin Laden. We apologise for the error.

Why is it incorrect? Because the paper made an Obama/Osama error — and that involves the US president’s last name.

Update #2: Huffington Post put together a great video compilation of all the on air flubs:

This may in fact be the worst on air Obama/Osama mixup of all. As New York magazine noted in its headline, “News Anchor Made ‘Osama’/‘Obama’ Gaffe Three Times in Seventeen Seconds.” Part of it is included in the above HuffPo compilation, but this is the full version. From Global TV in Canada

Update May 5: Yet another correction from the Charlotte Observer:

In some editions Wednesday, a front page story about tensions between the U.S. and Pakistani governments incorrectly referred to Osama bin Laden as Obama.

Update May 8: A May 6 correction from the Guardian:

An article meant to name Osama bin Laden, but instead said: “Asked on Wednesday whether the team that killed Obama had come under fire, (Jay) Carney said the White House had gone to the limit in providing details and that any more would risk future operations” (Photos reveal gruesome aftermath of Bin Laden raid, 5 May, page 9 turn from page 1, early editions). Link

Update May 11: From the Sacramento Bee:

A Washington Post story on Page A12 on May 2 and a McClatchy Newspapers Washington Bureau story on Page A13 on May 6 mistakenly used the name Obama instead of Osama in references to Osama bin Laden. Link