From a column by Laura Vozzella in the Baltimore Sun:
From the misplaced obsessive attention to detail file: In writing about Fred Bealefeld’s missing dog Wednesday, I double-checked Scooby’s gender (male) but somehow assumed the police chief’s two “kids” were boys. The commish has one boy and one girl. The Baltimore Sun, and this columnist in particular, regret the error.
Thanks, Bill!
A photo in yesterday’s Health Today section had an incorrect photo identification. The photo labeled as being of Dr. Mohan Suntha was actually of Dr. Mandeep R. Mehra. The Sun regrets the error. Link
Barack Obama’s trip to the Middle East included a stop in Jordan, not Lebanon, as an editorial stated Tuesday. The Sun regrets the error.
An article about celebrity divorce in the July 9 Today section incorrectly characterized accusations made by David Gest against Liza Minnelli. Gest did not allege that Minnelli had given him a sexually transmitted disease, and he says he has never had such a disease. Link
Read more of these errors here.
As you’re no doubt aware, a photograph purporting to show the successful test firing of four missiles by Iran was revealed to have been manipulated. In fact, only three missiles were successfully fired. The image, provided by the Iranian government, was distributed by Agence-France Presse and used by many media outlets. You can view some front pages here.
Photo District News published a good story on Thursday, the day the photo was exposed:
…Photo editors in the U.S. variously blamed themselves and AFP, a respected photo agency, for not catching the photo.
“AFP should have caught it, really,” says Tim Rasmussen, assistant managing editor for photography at the Denver Post, which ran the photo on A1. “It should never have gotten past them.”
But another Post editor was miffed that he failed to catch it. “Oh, I hate days like this,” said Ken Lyons, the paper’s front-page photo editor. “It was right there in front of me. I should have seen it.” …
Catching some of the heat Thursday was Getty Images, which distributes AFP in the U.S. Getty director of photography Pancho Bernasconi says the AFP content arrives through an automatic feed and Getty does not edit it.
Some newspapers made it clear in their captions or credit lines that the photo was provided by the Iranian government. Others did not. The Denver Post ran the image as its lead art and credited it to AFP/Getty; the Baltimore Sun ran the photo on page 1 and credited it to Agence France Presse.
Early Thursday on the East Coast, more than 12 hours after the AFP image had been distributed, the Associated Press moved a nearly identical photo showing three missiles. It appears to have been photographed a fraction of a second apart from the AFP image. In a news story, the AP said it obtained the photo from the same Iranian Web site from which the AFP obtained theirs.
The first person to call foul on the photo appears to have been the political blog Little Green Footballs, which spotted the manipulation Wednesday. It took until Thursday for word to spread widely through sites like The Drudge Report and The New York Times. The AFP correction ran shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday on the East Coast.
UPDATE July 17: A reader wrote in to note that militaryphotos.net, not Little Green Footballs, was the first “to call foul” on the photo. You can read the post here. Thanks, Dominik!
And here are the corrections I’ve seen thus far (AFP corrected/retracted its image on Thursday):
On Page 1 Thursday, a photo released by the Iranian government accompanying a story about Iran’s test-firing of missiles was apparently digitally manipulated to include four missiles. Another image was released Thursday that shows three missiles. A story about the photo appears on Page 12. Link
A photograph of the test firing of missiles released by the public relations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Sepah News, which ran on the front page of yesterday’s editions of The Sun had been digitally altered. The Sun was unaware of this manipulation. The photograph above is the correct image, which shows one missile remaining in the launcher. Link
Iran missile test: A photo from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard that accompanied an article in Thursday’s Section A about the country’s test of medium- and long-range missiles apparently was digitally altered to show four missiles successfully launching. It later became clear that the original photo showed only three rockets. News coverage on A1 and A4. Link
A related correction:
In some broadcasts, we did not note that the Web site Little Green Footballs had posted an item Wednesday evening declaring that the photograph of the Iranian missile launch had been doctored — before The New York Times published its analysis Thursday morning. Link
A list of famous last words published in yesterday’s editions of The Sun incorrectly attributed the authorship of Moby-Dick to Nathaniel Hawthorne. The novel was written by Herman Melville.
The Sun regrets the error. Link
An article published in the Dec. 26 editions of The Sun on the deaths of Jasmin Borum and Pauline Borum incorrectly characterized the relationship between Jasmin and her parents. Jasmin’s father, Alfred Maurice Robinson, and his wife, Sue Robinson, say they were active in Jasmin’s life and tried twice to obtain custody of her.
The article also misstated Jasmin’s age and the couple’s affiliation with the military. Alfred Robinson is not in the military. His wife, Sue Robinson, is a U.S. Army colonel. Jasmin was 17.
The Sun regrets the errors. Link
An article in Sunday’s Arts & Life Today section about The Stoop Storytelling Series misquoted one of the speakers. Karen Weeks spoke about her tumultuous relationship with a ring she had picked up at a Stoop show. She was not referring to her personal relationships. Link
An article in yesterday’s editions of The Sun about NASA’s Messenger mission to Mercury quoted University of Arizona scientist Bob Strom describing an emotional “Hillary moment” when he saw new pictures from the planet. In editing, the reference was made to say a “Sir Edmund” Hillary moment. Strom was referring to Hillary Clinton. Link
Correction: This post initially carried the headline, “Hillary Clinton, note Sir Edmund Hillary.” It has been corrected. We regret the error. Thanks, Aldous!
