Tag Archives: editor’s notes

Editors’ Note

August 14, 2009 – 8:00 am

nytbanner1An article on Aug. 4 about a judge’s ruling granting permanent custody of Michael Jackson’s three children to his mother, Katherine Jackson, and an editors’ note last Thursday, said that lawyers for Mrs. Jackson were considering challenging the two executors of Mr. Jackson’s will on the grounds that they allegedly took advantage of addictions that incapacitated him and impaired his judgment. That allegation was attributed to “people close to the Jackson family who asked not to be named,” and in later copies of the newspaper the original article reported that a spokesman for the executors denied it. Times editors should not have published the anonymously made accusation, unsupported in the article by any evidence or publicly available corroboration — with or without a denial. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged , | Comments

NYT Mag Editor’s Note details lapses in reporting, fact checking

April 13, 2009 – 8:00 am

nytimesmagYou’d expect a magazine to exercise extra caution when publishing an article about a “vending machine for crows.” It’s a strange idea, not to mention one that was developed for a master’s thesis in a “Interactive Telecommunications Program.” Because the story doesn’t fall into the category of common knowledge, it requires particularly careful editing and fact checking.

The New York Times Magazine fact checks all of its articles, but the process broke down when it came to the vending machine story. On Sunday, the Times published a lengthy Editor’s Note to explain the reporting, editing and fact checking errors. The Note:

An article in the Year in Ideas issue on Dec. 14, 2008, reported on Josh Klein, whose master’s thesis for New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program proposed “a vending machine for crows” that would enable the birds to exchange coins for peanuts. The article reported that beginning in June 2008, Klein tested the machine at the Binghamton Zoo, that the crows learned how to use it and that after a month the crows were actually scouring the ground for loose change.
The Times has since learned that Klein was never at the Binghamton Zoo, and there were no crows on display there in June 2008. He performed these experiments with captive crows in a Brooklyn apartment; he told the reporter about the Brooklyn crows but implied that his work with them was preliminary to the work at the zoo. Asked to explain these discrepancies, Klein now says he and the reporter had a misunderstanding about the zoo.
The reporter never called the zoo in Binghamton to confirm. And while the fact-checker did discuss the details with Klein, he did not call the zoo, as required under The Times’s fact-checking standards. In addition, the article said that Klein was working with graduate students at Cornell University and Binghamton University to study how wild crows make use of his machine, which does exist. Klein did get a professor at Binghamton to help him try it out twice in Ithaca, with assistance from a Binghamton graduate student, and it was not a success. Corvid experts who have since been interviewed have said that Klein’s machine is unlikely to work as intended.
These discrepancies were pointed out to The Times by the Binghamton professor several weeks after the article was published; this editors’ note was delayed for additional reporting. These details should have been discovered during the reporting and editing process. Had that happened, the article would not have been published.

The original story came in at just under 250 words; the Editor’s Note is close to 100 words longer. That’s a sign something was seriously wrong with the article. In the end, as the Note concludes, the story should never have made it into print. Even if Klein and the writer did have a “misunderstanding,” the fact checker should have discovered the truth and alerted the editor, who then should have killed the piece.

Magazine-style fact checking is currently journalism’s best system to prevent factual errors.  However, this example demonstrates that it’s far from perfect. Errors made by the source and writer were not caught by the editor and also escaped notice by the fact checker. The mistakes circumvented a process designed to catch and fix them.

Then, after publication, Klein chose not to bring the mistakes to the Times’ attention; it was up to a professor with a slight connection to the story to reveal the mistake.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Magazines, Major Errors | Also tagged , , , | Comments

Minnesota student admits he never shared a “crème brulee torte” with Hillary Clinton

March 5, 2009 – 8:00 am

minnesotadailyCity Pages, a weekly in Minneapolis/St. Paul, highlighted this remarkable Editor’s Note from the Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Minnesota:

Editor’s note: Some of the claims made by Charles Carlson included in this article were later found to be untrue. Several months after this story was printed, Carlson admitted he had lied about officiating tennis in the Beijing Olympics, and had also lied about growing up in England and having a personal connection to the Clintons. Hillary Clinton never shared her crème brulee torte with him. Carlson grew up in the United States–not in England. Carlson claims he was a communications director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, but The Minnesota Daily has been unable to independently verify this. See a Daily article about Carlson on March 2 for details about these inaccuracies.

It comes six months after the Daily published a a rather fawning piece about Carlson. The Note was published in conjunction with a Daily report that detailed Carlson’s troubled relationship with the truth. From the original Daily piece about him:

He was a Beijing Olympics tennis official and is a University graduate student, GLBT rights advocate and director of operations at a Minneapolis architecture firm. Is there anything Charles Carlson doesn’t do?

Um, tell the truth? From the Daily’s investigation into his background:

Just days before DFL caucusing begins for Minneapolis City Council elections, Charles Carlson — University of Minnesota student and Minnesota representative at the Democratic National Convention — said he will announce Monday his withdrawal from the Ward 2 council member race following a series of lies regarding his past and his qualifications.
An investigation by The Minnesota Daily found that Carlson lied on several occasions concerning items such as his college education at Princeton University and where he grew up.
Carlson, who speaks with an English accent, previously claimed he grew up in Ramsgate, England, but admitted recently that he grew up in the United States.
The Daily confirmed that Carlson attended elementary school, middle schools and high schools throughout Minnesota, including Northfield High School, where a former classmate said Carlson did not have an accent. Also, the classmate did not have any knowledge of Carlson previously living in England.
In a Feb. 1 Daily article, Carlson said his English background would help him connect with the 2nd Ward’s immigrant population.
Carlson also provided the Daily with two fraudulent transcripts to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and Princeton University. These schools, along with two other English schools he claimed to have attended, had no record of Carlson.
Carlson said he has been diagnosed with schizophrenia affective disorder, which impacts an individual’s ability to accurately judge reality…

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UPDATED: The Washington Post had a bad weekend

February 22, 2009 – 7:31 pm

washpost4The Washington Post and its magazine this weekend published three Editor’s Notes, one of which included an apology. As I pointed out in a recent column for Columbia Journalism Review online, the Post rarely makes apologies. Here’s the apology/Editor’s Note from magazine editor Tom Shroder:

In the Jan. 25 issue of the Magazine, we ran an essay in the XX Files headlined “Suspended Disbelief.” The author was writing about the dilemma she felt when a friend’s husband was sent to jail for molesting a young girl, despite his protestations of innocence. In the end, she discovered that even though she wanted to believe her friend’s husband, she couldn’t quite do it.
The column had factual errors, and editors in the Magazine, including me, failed to catch them. The author wrote that the man had been talked into accepting a plea agreement, and implied that there had been only one accuser. In fact, the man had turned down the plea offer, and had been tried and convicted. Also, more than one girl made accusations. The inescapable conclusion is that the man’s guilt was not as ambiguous as presented. No names were used, but the families of the victims only too readily recognized the circumstances and were understandably upset by the implication of the story. Today, I want to apologize for our errors and publish a letter from a victim’s grandmother …

The magazine also felt the need to publish an Editor’s Note to apologize in advance for a column, headline and illustration in this week’s issue:

The headline, illustration and text of “Below the Beltway,” a column in The Washington Post Magazine today, may cause offense to readers. The magazine was printed before a widely publicized incident last week in which a chimpanzee attacked and badly mauled a woman in Stamford, Conn. In addition, the image and text inadvertently may conjure racial stereotypes that The Post does not countenance. We regret the lapse.

The column, which is written by Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten, is online here.  This is the illustration:

The online version of the column doesn’t include the Note. Finally, the paper published this Editor’s Note:

A Feb. 19 Page One article disclosed an FBI investigation into the personal life of the late Jack Valenti, former White House aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson. The piece should have stated more expressly than it did that the investigation produced no evidence that Valenti was gay or had a sexual relationship with a photographer who was mentioned in FBI records but whose name was redacted from those files. The motivation for the investigation is not clear from the files provided by the FBI. In addition, The Post should have made clear that it contacted Valenti’s immediate family before the piece was published. After considering the matter, they requested that no statement from the family be included in the article. The Post should have indicated that the family knew of and was given an opportunity to address the facts presented in the article.

Thanks, G!

UPDATE Feb. 23: The Washington City Paper received a comment from Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli about the cartoon Editor’s Note:

The decision to run Editor’s Notes at major dailies doesn’t rest with the paper’s lower rungs. This is an executive editor’s prerogative, and Marcus Brauchli, who holds that title at the Post, says there are two reasons for the note.
No. 1: “[T]he magazine had gone to press before the incident in Connecticut. We wanted readers to understand that, so they wouldn’t think us callous in our choice of words and images.”
OK, unnecessary but understandable. But what about the racial part?
Here’s Brauchli on that: “[S]ome people in our newsroom thought the illustration and some language in the article was potentially problematic. We debated internally whether the illustration or the piece could be interpreted by anyone, even in a stretch, as racially insensitive. We concluded, regretfully, that such an interpretation might be made, and we wanted to let readers know that The Post neither intended nor tolerates the use of racial stereotypes.”

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers | Also tagged , , , | Comments

“The Washington Post doesn’t apologize”

November 4, 2008 – 8:00 am

Critic Tom Sietsema should have recused himself from reviewing the Commissary, a restaurant featured in the Oct. 29 Food section. He and one of the restaurant’s owners had earlier had a personal relationship. The Washington Post regrets that he reviewed this restaurant, and will remove the review from its online archive. Link

This Editor’s Note was written about by the Washington City Paper, and the resulting story includes the text of an email sent by the owner of the Commissary. It’s notable for this passage (emphasis added):

We challenged Mr. Sietsema on his grievously negative assertions, his lack of disclosure and the simple fact that the article should never have been written. We insisted that recusing himself was the only proper and ethical thing to have done. He apologized for not recusing himself, nothing more.

All this was then turned over to his editor, Tom Shroder of The Washington Post Magazine. Mr. Shroder, understanding the ramifications of Mr. Sietsema’s actions offered a settlement; kill the story on the web immediately, print a retraction in Sunday’s paper, and that neither Mr. Sietsema nor any member of The Washington Post food team would ever write about any Eatwell DC restaurant again. What they would not do is apologize for the harm caused by Sietsema’s spurious comments. “The Washington Post doesn’t apologize” but “we will say we regret”.

Thanks, Greg!

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NY Times publishes Editors’ Note after source admits to “exaggerated” story

July 9, 2008 – 2:47 pm

A front-page picture caption on June 26 describing an 11-month-old boy whose legs were in casts stated that his legs were broken and that his mother said the injuries were caused by an episode of state-sponsored violence in Zimbabwe. After the picture and an accompanying article that also described the injuries were published, The New York Times took the boy to a medical clinic in Harare for help. When the casts were removed, medical workers there discovered the boy had club feet. Doctors said on Monday that X-rays of the baby’s legs showed no evidence of bone fractures.
The mother subsequently admitted that she had exaggerated injuries she said had been sustained by the boy during an attack by governing party militia. In multiple interviews, she said that youths backing President Robert Mugabe had thrown her son to the concrete floor — and she still says that event did occur.
The owner of the house where she and the baby were staying confirmed that marauding youths from the governing party had attacked the house. He said he believed the baby had been thrown to the floor during the attack, but the owner was in a different room and did not witness it firsthand. The landlord, other lodgers, neighbors and opposition supporters also confirmed that the mother had been singled out because her husband was an opposition member.
The mother, however, later told The Times that the boy had been wearing casts even at the time of the attack, as part of a treatment he had received for his club feet at a different medical facility. She said she misrepresented the boy’s injuries to generate help because she could not afford corrective surgery for the boy. Link

Bill Keller told Editor & Publisher the photographer did nothing wrong by taking the boy to get medical attention.

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Salmon industry gets Editors’ Note after questioning NY Times article

May 13, 2008 – 1:25 pm

Last week I received an email from CounterPoint Strategies, a PR firm that helps “clients confront volatile media circumstances.” They pointed me to a release by Salmon of the Americas Inc., an industry trade group, that raised several questions about a recent article by New York Times Reporter Alexei Barrionuevo.

CounterPoint contacted me because it saw my previous posts about incidents of plagiarism in Barrionuevo’s work. I read the information from Salmon of the Americas, which did seem to raise important questions about Barrionuevo’s article. As an example, take these two points from the release:

Mr. Barrionuevo described Adolfo Flores as the Port Director of Castro, Chiloe Island. In actuality, Mr. Flores is simply a security guard who works for a third party contractor. I’ve enclosed an English translation of a letter from Patricio Cuello, the general manager of the Port of Puerto Montt, which administers Castro, confirming this…

Later, the article quotes a local fisherman, Victor Gutierrez, who says that recent catches have been far smaller than normal. But in Chile, all fishermen must be registered with local authorities in order to work as an artisan fisherman or commercial fisherman. According to government sources in Chile, there is no fisherman by the name of Victor Gutierrez registered in the Cochamo area. We would like some explanation for how Mr. Barrionuevo verified this source. In addition, it would have been responsible for Mr. Barrionuevo to have checked with fisheries biologists for an alternative explanation to the smaller catches—such as change in runoff, temperature and ocean salinity in the area.

I asked CounterPoint if they had received a response from the paper and was told that the information was under review at the Times. I decided to give the paper time to look into the accusations before writing about them. The Times today published an Editors’ Note:

An article on March 27 reported on a virus, infectious salmon anemia, or I.S.A., killing millions of salmon cultivated for export by Chile’s salmon farming industry. It quoted an official at the port of Castro, Chile, describing bags of fish food stored at the facility by Marine Harvest, a Norwegian company, as containing antibiotics, pigments and hormones. The official, Adolfo Flores, identified himself as the port director. He in fact worked as a security guard, The Times learned subsequently. Had The Times been aware of his actual position at the time, it would not have cited him as an authority on the contents of the bags, which were labeled medicated food. The article also should have noted that Marine Harvest and SalmonChile, an industry association, deny that they use hormones or that the pigments they use pose any risk to consumers.

So, the “port director” was in fact just a security guard. The Note also acknowledges, though not explicitly, that the article didn’t do a good enough job of including the industry perspective on hormones and pigments. (A CounterPoint rep told me their position is that the Times should either provide evidence of the use of hormones and the risk of pigments, or correct its reporting. CounterPoint is unhappy with the “deny” language.”)

But what about Salmon of the Americas’ allegation about a fisherman quoted in the story? And how did a security guard manage to pass himself off as the port director? The Editors’ Note doesn’t provide the necessary answers and context.

The paper, did, however, offer a detailed response to CounterPoint. In an email to the firm, foreign news enterprise editor Kirk Kraeutler replied to the issues raised in the release. Here’s what he wrote about the questionable fisherman:

Though unregistered with the state, Victor Gutierrez is a fisherman with many years of experience selling to local markets, by his account, which was corroborated by family members. Several other local fishermen interviewed around Seno de Reloncavi and Puerto Montt and as far south as Chiloe, echoed his concerns, which were also supported by at least three biologists from Chilean universities in the Puerto Montt area who were interviewed for the article.

Kraeutler’s full reply is pasted below. It’s an important read for anyone wondering how the Times responds to significant inquiries about its reporting. It also fills some of the holes left by the Editors’ Note. In regards to the security guard, Kraeutler writes that the man “apparently misrepresented himself to our reporter.” The guard no longer works at the port, but CounterPoint says he’s still employed by the security contractor. They are currently trying to track him down.

As for Barrionuevo, well, at the very least some training and/or discipline seems appropriate.

As a final note, I wasn’t the only person contacted by CounterPoint; a post appeared on the NewsBusters site on May 8, the day after I received the information.

The Full Times Response:

Dear Mr. McErlain and Ms. McKnight:

This is in response to your queries about Alexei Barrionuevo’s March 27 article on Chile’s salmon farming industry. We have vetted your complaints carefully and will correct the identification of Adolfo Flores. He had apparently misrepresented himself to our reporter, and we have since confirmed with a former colleague of his at the port that he no longer works there and had worked in security.

Here is a detailed response to your other points:

Health Concerns and ISA: Mr. Barrionuevo’s article states clearly that the ISA virus is not considered harmful to consumers by either the Chilean industry or American officials. It also makes clear that antibiotics have been used not to treat ISA, but rather other, non-viral diseases in recent years.

2. Colorants: In addition to astaxanthin, the colorant you refer to your letters, another major colorant used in salmon farming is canthaxanthin. That is the one the O.E.C.D. report expressed concern about in Chile’s salmon industry because of “its association with retina problems in human beings,” a link noted by many other scientists and researchers around the world.

3. The Environment: Despite the steps taken by the industry, Arne Hjetltnes, the Marine Harvest spokesman in Chile, acknowledged the need for greater regulation, saying the problems had contributed to the ISA outbreak. The article also notes that Cesar Barrios, the president of ChileSalmon, dismissed the criticism of the sanitary conditions and said there was no scientific evidence to support them, though researchers interview by The Times disagreed.

4. Hormones: Sernapesca’s website lists the drugs, including hormones, authorized for use in Chilean aquaculture and how they may be administered, including some in pellet and powder form. The full list includes Azagly-nafarelina (acetato) Solución Inyectable; Factor Liberador de LH, SGnRH Analogo Pellets; Factor Liberador de LH, SGnRH Analogo, Domperidona Solución Inyectable; and Factor Liberador LH, LH-RH analogo Polvo.

5. The fisherman: Though unregistered with the state, Victor Gutierrez is a fisherman with many years of experience selling to local markets, by his account, which was corroborated by family members. Several other local fishermen interviewed around Seno de Reloncavi and Puerto Montt and as far south as Chiloe, echoed his concerns, which were also supported by at least three biologists from Chilean universities in the Puerto Montt area who were interviewed for the article.

6. Research: The industry has spent some money on research, but several researchers in Chile dismissed the dollar amount as inadequate to what is needed and slight when compared with the billions of dollars in annual revenue generated by Chile’s salmon industry.

7. Dr. Felipe Cabello: Dr. Cabello says he is not dependent on any environmental NGOs to fund his research. He talks to many sources, including NGOs, to obtain information. The funds that allowed him to travel to Chile and Norway to study the specific problems related to aquaculture and antibiotics came from a competitive John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation USA/Canada Fellowship awarded in 2004.

The estimate that Dr. Cabello has made regarding antibiotic use was described in some detail in a 13-page study in November 2007 titled “Uso de Productos Quimicos en La Salmonicultura: Revision de Practicas Actuales y Posibles Efectos Medioambientales.” (available at www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/aquaculture/WWFBinaryitem8829.pdf).

Dr. Cabello was cited as an author, along with: Les Burridge from the St. Andrews Biological Station, New Brunswick Canada; Judith Weis from the Department of Biological Sciences, Rutgers University; and Jaime Pizarro from the Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad de Santiago de Chile. In table 1, page 9 of the study, Chile is listed as using 0.477 kilograms per metric ton of antibiotics in cultivation of Atlantic salmon, which is 298 times more than Norway’s 0.0016 kilograms per metric ton.

The study says it was funded by Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, Fundacion Terram, Marine Harvest, the National Environmental Trust, the Norweigan Seafood Federation, Skretting, SalmonChile, Salmon of the Americas and World Wildlife Fund.

8. Wolfram Heise and Sernapesca: Mr. Heise reflected a view of concerned environmentalists, and our reporting, which involved talking to multiple environmentalists from various groups both in and out of Chile, did not detect the wide gap in opinion you cite regarding farmed salmon practices in Chile.

Generally, Sernapesca’s views could have been more fully expressed if its executives agreed to an interview. Those queries are well documented in emails exchanges initiated in the last week of February by Pascale Bonnefoy, The Times stringer in Chile, with Rosa Maria Rejas, the head spokesperson for Sernapesca.

Ms. Rejas said the agency was going through a change of leadership and that the new chief, Felix Inostroza, who took over on March 3 after many years at the agency, would consider an interview after going through a round of interviews with department heads.

Ms. Bonnefoy then asked for an interview with the head of the Aquaculture unit. Sernapesca officials responded that the director would have to authorize any interview with any head of any unit.

On March 4, Mr. Barrionuevo sought the help of Andrea Lagos, the press attaché for the Chilean embassy in Washington, who said officials at the agency would respond to written questions within two days. A set of questions was sent on March 7, with the intent that follow-up questions might be needed. No responses came, and the email was not returned for incorrect address. A copy of the questions was also sent to Ms. Lagos.

Mr. Barrionuevo and Ms. Bonnefoy called and emailed Ms. Rejas to follow up, warning of impending deadlines. After waiting six days for a response, on March 13 Mr. Barrionuevo sent another email to Ms. Lagos in Washington, asking for help.

We received no communication from Sernapesca until March 28, one day after the publication of the article. Ms. Rejas said then that the questions had not arrived and that she had been on vacation, though neither her phone message nor email indicated that she was away.
We appreciate your patience in awaiting our own response, and hope that this answers your concerns.

Sincerely,

Kirk Kraeutler
Enterprise Editor
Foreign News Desk
The New York Times

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Ottawa Citizen publishes highly questionable quotes

April 30, 2008 – 8:00 am

An Editor’s Note:
A story on page B1 of the April 5 edition of the Citizen, which looked at the future of NATO, should not have included quotes attributed to Clifford Gaddy, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Mr. Gaddy was not interviewed by the Citizen for that article, and the Brookings Institution says that the quotes incorrectly attributed to him do not reflect his actual views.

So were the quotes fabricated? Plagiarized from another source? How did this happen? And why can’t/won’t the paper explain the origin of the quotes to readers?

Here are the relevant passages from the article, which is not online:

“What confuses matters is that the two pillars of Bush’s legacy plan — developing a better relationship with Russia and promoting democracy through NATO in Eastern Europe — appear to be in conflict with each other,” says Clifford Gaddy, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institute, another Washington think-tank. “The result is he might wind up achieving neither.”

Ukraine and Georgia provide another contradiction, Mr. Gaddy notes. Support for NATO membership might be high among ex-patriates in Canada and the U.S., but polls suggest the people actually living in the two countries are not so sure.

“In Ukraine, there is still lingering suspicion of NATO left over from the Cold War,” he says, “and while there might not be a lot of love for the Russians, people see the advantages of not provoking them. It’s a pretty even split.”

Note that the Brookings Institution is incorrectly identified as the “Brookings Institute” in the article. That error is not corrected in the Editor’s Note.

From further down in the story:

For his part, Mr. Gaddy of the Brookings Institute contends that NATO, one tier or not, is as valuable as ever to the U.S. in a world where the rise of China as a great power, combined with the muscle of a resurgent Russia across Eurasia, requires the counterweight of an North American-European alliance

Thanks, Doug!

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers | Also tagged , , , | Comments

Editor’s Note

April 9, 2008 – 8:00 am

In “The World According To John McCain” (April 7), NEWSWEEK described a meeting at the 2006 Munich security conference in which Sen. John McCain allegedly erupted at the German foreign minister, whom McCain thought was being insufficiently tough on the brutal regime in Belarus. There are, however, conflicting versions of the episode, and we should have made that clear. Other people who were in the room at the time dispute the account, and several of those who were there, including those who recall a brief flare-up of anger from McCain (which the senator denies), believed the incident was minor, based on a misunderstanding caused by a translation problem, and was quickly cleared up. Senator McCain should have been given an opportunity to give his version of events in the original story, and we regret that the piece did not note the different recollections of the moment, including the denials that there was any display of anger. Link

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Plagiarism at the Brown Daily Herald

February 12, 2008 – 8:00 am

IvyGate and Gawker recently noted a recent incident of plagiarism at the Brown Daily Herald. Here’s the editors note:

Last week, as part of its usual fact-checking process, The Herald discovered that two news articles scheduled for publication contained material taken from other sources’ reporting without quotation or attribution. The articles were never printed. The Herald began a thorough review of the writers’ published work, as it does whenever inauthentic content is found.
During that review, two published articles were found that contained passages similar or identical to those in other publications.
“Common App now has rival in Universal App,” (Sept. 26, 2007) contains text similar or identical to writing in an article in the Yale Daily News (”Common App faces new online rival,” Sept. 7, 2007). The article also contains information from an interview not attributed to the News’ reporting.
“James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA structure, resigns after racist remarks,” (Oct. 31, 2007) contained quotations not attributed to reporting for an article in the Harvard Crimson (”Watson Apologizes Amid Uproar Over His Comments on Race,” Oct. 19, 2007).
The Herald makes every possible effort to verify the authenticity of our contributors’ content before publication. Our reporters and columnists receive continual training on the ethics of their work.
We sincerely apologize to the publications whose work was copied and to our readers.

I listed plagiarism at student newspapers among the Trends of Note in my 2007 wrap-up of the year in errors and corrections. Let’s hope this isn’t a sign of things to come for 2008.

On a related note, this incident inspired Gawker to get its Google Maps on. Maggie Shnayerson created a map of incidents of plagiarism at American universities. Have a look here.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , , | Comments

Press release printed “nearly verbatim” in paper

December 17, 2007 – 8:00 am

An Editor’s Note:

In the Statesman’s Schools column on Wednesday’s Page B2 , the first three paragraphs of an item about school breakfasts were taken nearly verbatim from a news release by the Center for Public Policy Priorities. It is not the American-Statesman’s practice to print items from outside sources verbatim and without proper credit. We regret the error.

Though the note consciously avoids using the word, this does fall into the plagiarism category.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , , | Comments

A “glimpse of leg” that was too much for readers

December 14, 2007 – 8:00 am

An Editor’s Note:

Yesterday’s front page picture of Maxine McKew has stirred considerable controversy. It was certainly not our intention to offend Ms McKew or our readers. The picture was chosen because the expressions on the faces of Ms McKew and John Howard captured perfectly the historic moment of the victor meeting the vanquished in Bennelong. It was the best such picture available to us. In small detail, the image showed a glimpse of leg up Ms McKew’s skirt. Nothing more. We regret that this has caused offence to some readers. The Canberra Times is not in the business of sensationalism.
Mark Baker, Editor

UPDATE: I’m grateful to loyal reader Steve for offering a link to where you can see the photo for yourself. (Click on the link at the top of the page.)

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TNR retracts Baghdad Diarist stories

December 3, 2007 – 9:28 pm

After four-and-a-half months of re-reporting, long bouts of silence, and tangling with the US Army and various publications and bloggers, The New Republic today published a lengthy article by editor Franklin Foer that attempts to offer the magazine’s final word on the veracity of columns written by Scott Thomas Beauchamp, its Baghdad Diarist.

We’ll skip to the punchline, which is contained at the very end of a very long article:

In retrospect, we never should have put Beauchamp in this situation. He was a young soldier in a war zone, an untried writer without journalistic training. We published his accounts of sensitive events while granting him the shield of anonymity–which, in the wrong hands, can become license to exaggerate, if not fabricate.

When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that. And, in light of the evidence available to us, after months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories.

We’ve read many retractions and editor’s notes over the last few years, and this is among the longest and most detailed. On its face, that’s a plus. Serious incidents are too often explained away with just a few sentences, and many details are left out. TNR has offered up a retelling of how concerns were raised about Beauchamp’s writing, and how the magazine responded to those concerns. But that doesn’t make it a completely satisfying account and explanation.

It takes Foer several thousand words to arrive at the above paragraphs; he’s buried the lede.

The lede also itself lacks a suitably blunt admission of retraction, an expression of regret, and an explanation of how the magazine will alter its policies and procedures to prevent this from happening again. Also, nowhere in the lengthy piece does Foer apologize to readers; in fact, he makes a point of opening with what seems like a dig at the Weekly Standard reporter who first raised concerns: “I didn’t know him or his byline.”

Foer takes other media to task for jumping to conclusions and explains how the military made it difficult for TNR to complete its re-reporting. Okay, interesting background. The outside pressures certainly made it difficult, but they’re not the focus at this point. The articles have been retracted — that’s the bottom line. TNR has to take its lumps and not appear as if it’s trying to spread blame.

As Maggie Shnayerson of Gawker noted earlier today:

Foer ought to have taken a page from the Chuck Lane School of Apologia. In 1998, when addressing TNR readers in the wake of the Stephen Glass scandal, the magazine’s 500-word piece concluded simply: “We offer no excuses for any of this. Only our deepest apologies to all concerned.”

Foer’s piece isn’t exactly a glossing over of the issue, but it hits several wrong notes and almost feels as if the final truth of retraction has been buried underneath an avalanche of expository writing. A simple, frank admission and expression of regret at the top of the piece would have made the important facts clear. Then the interesting background would be just that: background

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Fabrication, Magazines, Major Errors, Regret Articles | Also tagged , , , | Comments

Plagiarism at the Brown Daily Herald

November 9, 2007 – 8:00 am

A columnist at the Brown Daily Herald, a student newspaper, has been fired after editors discovered that six of his columns included plagiarized material. The same writer also plagiarized in a letter to the editor that was recently published in the New York Times. The Times published an Editor’s Note yesterday, and the student paper published one on Monday. From the Brown Daily Herald’s Note:

The Herald has discovered that six opinions columns by Zachary Townsend ‘09 published between 2005 and 2007 contained passages that are similar or identical to text that previously appeared in other published work. Such misrepresentation is a fundamental violation of Herald policy, and Townsend has consequently been dismissed as a Herald columnist.
On Oct. 24, in the routine fact-checking process used for all Herald news and opinions content, a Herald copy editor discovered that a portion of a column by Townsend that was slated for publication was nearly identical to a passage in “The Curricular Revolution,” an academic paper written by Katie Kinsey ‘09 and posted on the University Library Web site.
The column was not published. The Herald then began a thorough review of Townsend’s 15 past columns, which revealed that six of his published columns contained material similar or identical to material in previously published works. When questioned about this discovery, Townsend admitted that several columns contained unoriginal work.

The paper then lists the offending columns and offers an apology to readers. The paper did well to initiate an internal review as soon as a single instance of plagiarism was discovered. Here is the Times Note:

On Aug. 7, we published a letter from Zachary Townsend, a student at Brown University and a columnist for the student newspaper, about Japan’s role in sex slavery in World War II, and slavery in the world today. We have now learned that the letter included material taken without attribution from an article in the November/December 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, “The New Global Slave Trade,” by Ethan B. Kapstein.
The student newspaper, The Brown Daily Herald, said in an editors’ note on Monday that it had discovered after a review that several of Mr. Townsend’s columns had included material taken from other sources without attribution and that he had been dismissed as a columnist.
Reached by e-mail on Tuesday about his letter in The Times, Mr. Townsend said he had read the Foreign Affairs article but had not intended to plagiarize from it.
Had we known of the unattributed material, we would not have published Mr. Townsend’s letter.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , , , , | Comments

Readers are very observant

November 2, 2007 – 8:00 am

An Editor’s Note:

An illustration on Sept. 5 with a front-page article about the role the turmoil of the 1960s played in shaping Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political philosophy showed part of a letter of recommendation that a professor at Wellesley College wrote for her when she applied to Yale Law School.
The letter was dated Oct. 13, 1968, and was written on Wellesley letterhead. Readers pointed out that the letterhead contained a nine-digit ZIP code, which was not used until many years later. The professor says that when the media began asking about Mrs. Clinton in 1992 while Bill Clinton was running for president, he had a copy of the 1968 letter retyped on the letterhead and has been using that copy since that time.
Had The Times noticed the discrepancy, it would not have used the letterhead to illustrate the article; this editors’ note was delayed for research. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged , | Comments

Details offers an (incorrect?) Editor’s Note

October 31, 2007 – 4:00 am

Page Six yesterday noted the interesting Editor’s Note contained in the latest issue of Details. But subsequent reporting has called the Note into question. The Note basically implied that two quotes attributed to Ben Affleck in a profile were fabricated. Obviously, that’s quite serious.
But Josh Kolbin at the Observer writes in a blog post that he was told by a Details publicist that “the quote in the story—written by freelancer Bart Blasengame—was actually accurate.”
“The comments were taken out of context,” said the spokeswoman. “There was absolutely nothing that was fabricated.”
As the Observer notes, “In that case, it would be [Details editor Dan] Peres who was inaccurate.” Gawker was told the same thing, in addition to receiving the information that Details’ editor-in-chief and Affleck are good friends.
“Were things taken out of context—or were they invented, as Peres says?” asks Gawker. “Because there’s a really serious line there to be considered before destroying someone’s career in journalism to appease a snippy star.”
Indeed. Building on that blog post, the latest edition of the Observer in print includes a comment from Details* editor Dan Peres. “I stand by the correction that I published, and I stand by the statements made on behalf of me and Details.”
Ah, so “nothing was… fabricated,” and yet Affleck never “made such a statement.”
The Observer tracked down Affleck’s publicist, who sides with the Editor’s Note:

Shawn Sachs, a publicist for Ben Affleck, was more definitive. “Ben didn’t say that [quote],” Mr. Sachs told The Observer. “It’s completely made up. In having to pick a side, I pick Dan Peres and the magazine over what their spokesperson is trying to spin.”
When informed of Mr. Peres’ statement, Mr Sachs e-mailed: “The magazine apology said ‘Never made such a statement.’ … The Details publicist said ‘Taken out of context.’ … They sure don’t sound like the same thing.”

On another note: Portfolio previously reported that Blasengame’s byline was mistakenly left off the story. He must be in love with Details right now.
And we’re still left wondering exactly what was and wasn’t said by Affleck, and what should and shouldn’t be corrected by Details. Is it really so hard for the magazine to give a clear explanation?

*Correction November 5, 2007: The title of the magazine was initially misspelled as “Detials” in this sentence.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Magazines | Also tagged , , , | Comments

NY Times letter writer accidentally plagiarizes from Times story

March 12, 2007 – 8:00 am

An Editor’s Note. See this similar, though much more serious incident.

A letter in most editions yesterday, by Syed Waris Shere, writing from Brooklyn, discussed Vice President Dick Cheney and the verdict in the trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr.
After the newspaper started printing, the letter was posted on our Web site, where an alert reader, to whom we are extremely grateful, noticed that almost all of the letter had been copied from an article about Mr. Cheney and the trial
from the previous day’s newspaper. The letter included parts of sentences written by a Times reporter and sentences taken from quotations in the article.
Mr. Shere said by telephone yesterday that he had intended to attribute all the copied passages in the letter, and regrets not having done so.
As soon as we learned of the problem, we removed the letter from our Web site, and from remaining copies of the paper that had not yet been printed. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , , | Comments Off

The week that was

August 14, 2006 – 8:01 am

We took a brief late summer vacation last week, but the corrections and accuracy news kept coming. So, enjoy some items of note from last week. And also read our other posts below for some notable corrections from last week.

Manipulated War Photos?
This big ongoing story relates to accusations against news organizations for running doctored war photos from the middle east. All this started when Reuters contributing photographer Adnan Hajj was found to have altered photos taken of the war in Lebanon. Reuters subsequently dismissed him and removed his photos from its databases. Accusations against other photographers have now started to fly. A round-up here and more here.

Wired News Removes Three Stories After Discovering Freelancer Fabricated Sources
The online news source has, for the second time in a little more than a year, had to investigate the work of a freelance contributor. Last year’s investigation resulted in Wired placing editor’s notes in 24 of freelancer Michelle Delio’s articles. Then on August 9 it announced a similar investigation had turned up problems with another writer:

Wired News has removed three articles from its website after an internal investigation failed to confirm the authenticity of a source
used in the stories. “Tribal Curse Haunts Launch Pad” (June 27, 2006), “NASA Boosts Heart-Monitoring Tech” (July 7, 2006) and “Don’t Flush It — Breathe It” (July 14, 2006), all by Philip Chien, relied in part on quotes and citations from Robert Ash, described in the first two stories as a “space historian” and in the last as an “aeronautical engineer and amateur space historian.”
In a phone conversation with Wired News editors, Chien had identified Ash as a professor of aeronautical engineering at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Reached by phone this week, Ash said he is not a space historian and has never participated in interviews with Chien. Ash is an aeronautical engineering professor at the university and has been involved in numerous NASA projects.
Chien is a freelance space reporter who has worked for online, print and television news outlets, and recently authored a book on the Columbia space shuttle disaster. He’s written seven stories for Wired News, two of them in 2004, the other five in the past few weeks…

The article explains more about how Wired discovered problems with Chien’s work. But of interest here is that Wired News instituted a new policy requiring all writers to submit contact information for each source in a story. It appears that the publication then conducts random checks with these sources, or follows up when they suspect something isn’t kosher.

Chicago Tribune Condemns The Wrong Eddie Johnson
The paper that last year managed to misidentify two Chicago men as mobsters two days in a row made another egregious mistaken ID last week. A former NBA player named Eddie Johnson was charged with sexual assault. But there are two Eddie Johnsons who played in the NBA, and the Tribune, rushing to get the news item in the paper before deadline, chose the wrong one. The mistaken Johnson told AP that it was the worst day of his life. “Devastating. Hard to explain,” he told the news service.
The day after its error, the Tribune ran an editor’s note and a correction. The editor’s note/apology:


Haste to make deadline is no excuse for putting incorrect information in a newspaper. Factual errors erode a paper’s credibility.

We made an inadvertent but hurtful error Tuesday night in an effort to get as much news as possible into Wednesday’s final edition of the Tribune sports section, and we would like to apologize to Eddie Johnson, his family and friends, and our readers.
An Associated Press story detailing the arrest of “former NBA All-Star Eddie Johnson” moved across the wire late Tuesday, and a decision was made to get it into the “Press Box” segment of the sports section, where our sports briefs go.
In Chicago, former NBA star Eddie Johnson means Eddie Johnson, 47, a 6-foot-7-inch forward from Westinghouse High School and the University of Illinois, the Eddie Johnson who went on to a 17-year pro career with seven NBA teams. The Eddie Johnson who was distinguished as much by good citizenship and charity work as by 19,202 career points, a 16-point scoring average and the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Award he won with the Phoenix Suns in 1988-89.

Unfortunately, the man arrested Tuesday was “the other” Eddie Johnson, 51, a 6-2 guard from Auburn who had a 10-year career with three NBA teams and has been in and out of trouble with the law since he quit playing in 1987.
In the last paragraph of the wire story, “the other” Eddie Johnson was identified correctly as a former Atlanta Hawks
All-Star who played college ball at Auburn. But in our haste to make deadline, we failed to make the distinction.
The Ocala, Fla., dateline should have been one tipoff. Chicago’s Eddie Johnson lives in Phoenix and works as a television analyst for the Suns. The charges–sexual battery on a child younger than 12 and residential burglary–should have been not a tipoff but a red flag. Anyone who knows or has had even limited contact with Chicago’s Eddie Johnson would find it unfathomable that he would be linked to such behavior.

“It has happened before” in other media, Johnson said Wednesday from his home in Phoenix. “The other guy keeps getting in trouble, and since I’m the more visible of the two, it keeps coming back to me.”

For the record, Chicago’s Eddie Johnson remains extensively involved in charity work, including motivational speaking and basketball clinics for kids. In addition to his broadcasting duties, he is president of a Phoenix telecommunications firm. He got his degree from Illinois in 1981, and he was and is regarded as one of the NBA’s model citizens.
Again, we apologize.
“It has been a tough day,” Johnson said, “but I appreciate you trying to set the record straight.”

And it looks like the South Florida Sun-Sentinel made the same error:

An item in the Briefing on Page 2C of Thursday’s Sports section did not make clear the identity of a former NBA player who has been charged with sexual assault, according to police in Ocala. The former NBA player charged, Eddie Johnson, played in the NBA from 1977-87 with the Atlanta Hawks, Cleveland Cavaliers and Seattle SuperSonics. He is not to be confused with the Eddie Johnson who is now a television analyst with one of his former teams, the Phoenix Suns. Link

An amusing correction from the New York Post’s Page Six:

August 10, 2006 – LARRY David and his wife, Laurie, must have pretty convincing doubles. The testy comic says yesterday’s
report from our spy that David went ballistic when his BMW was hit by a shopping cart on Martha’s Vineyard is “so fantastical, I’m considering hiring your source for my show . . . none of it is true.” Worse, the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star says, “the most egregious error was that they had me wearing shorts, an item of clothing that hasn’t been on my body since I started growing hair.” Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers, Online, Wire service | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off