As has now been reported in many places, several media outlets last week fell for a hoax study that claimed users of Internet Explorer have a lower IQ than people who prefer other browsers. The BBC, which covered the fake news, published a report today revealing the hoax: The story was reported by many high [...]
Via the Media Blog: Report an error
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 [...]
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 [...]
A report by the BBC World Service's show Assignment wrongly stated that "millions of pounds raised by Band Aid was used to buy arms." The BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit has now weighed in, stating plainly that there was no evidence to support the reporting. Here's how the BBC itself reported on the apology, which was [...]
BBC issued an on air apology on Radio 2 Saturday morning in order to try and make amends for the Russel Brand/Jonathan Ross scandal. Below is the text of the apology. (A slightly different version that didn’t mention Mr. Sachs’ wife and family was broadcast prior to this altered version.) On 18 October, the BBC [...]
From the BBC’s Editors blog: Last night the BBC broadcast a still which we said showed dozens of bodies lying in the waterfront of the Irrawaddy delta. We have since discovered that the picture was actually taken in Aceh, Sumatra following the tsunami of 2004. This was a mistake, and we will be correcting it [...]
From a post on BBC’s The Editors blog: …On Thursday we reported that in New York the “Dow Jones was substantially down amidst more credit crunch fears”. That’s odd, many of you told us, as – being Thanksgiving – Wall Street’s finest were on a day-off. Our economics editor Stephanie Flanders was mortified – “unforgivable [...]
We’ve been cataloging the apologies offered to Morien Jones by UK newspapers (read one of the apologies for some background), and now there are a few more to add to the pile. Actually, a lot more. We can’t recall another recent UK story that caused so many apologies. Read the previous apology from the Yorkshire [...]
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post had been updated/corrected with new information. Due to technical difficulties at Regret, this information was added later than we would have liked. We apologize for the delay. A UK taxi driver man at the BBC for a job interview found himself being interviewed live in a BBC TV studio recently, after [...]
BBC TV and Radio fell victim to a hoaxer last week. A man who said his name was Jude Finisterra and claimed to be a spokesman for Dow Chemical went on the air at the Beeb and said Dow was taking full responsibility for the 1984 Bhopal disaster, and had set up a $12 billion [...]
