November 5, 2009 – 8:00 am
An essay on the subject of films about poets referred in error to the suicide of Ted Hughes’s second wife. His partner Assia Wevill killed herself in 1969 – but Carol Hughes, his second wife, is alive. We apologise for this mistake (Film, 31 October, page 19, Guide). Link
October 29, 2009 – 8:00 am
An article pointed to a political dispute in Islington, north London, as an example of why some opponents suspected the Liberal Democrats of preparing to use dirty tactics at the next election (Lib Dems accused of dog whistle politics over Gypsy claims, 12 September, page 7). It also mentioned an incident when a rival candidate was called a “greasy-haired twat” in a Lib Dem leaflet during June’s county council election campaign in Cornwall. A small text panel showed the offending leaflet extract, captioning it: “literature distributed on behalf of Anna Pascoe, Lib Dem candidate for Cornwall council”. Anna Pascoe has asked us to make clear that she neither endorsed nor voiced the insult. She and the area’s Lib Dem agent denounced it at the time, and said it appeared in about 40 rogue leaflets distributed while about 1,700 authorised leaflets were being given out. Link
October 26, 2009 – 8:00 am
An obituary said that Al Martino’s birth name was Alfred Cini Martino, that he recorded his first hit, Here in My Heart, for the Capitol record label, and that four years later (1956) his version of Volare was released. He was actually born Alfred Cini, recorded Here in My Heart for a small independent company called BBS, and released Volare in 1975 (15 October, page 36). Link
October 19, 2009 – 8:00 am
Errors appeared in an interview with Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, who own Frieze magazine and the events company that stages the Frieze art fair. In connection with part of the piece that quoted them talking about founding the contemporary art magazine, it has been pointed out to us that the masthead of the first edition of Frieze in 1991 listed the founding editors as the artist Tom Gidley and Matthew Slotover, and Amanda Sharp as advertising and PR. Elsewhere in our article, the 2005 figure of £2.5m should have been given as the art fair’s turnover – fees from visitors and exhibitors – not as its profit; the height of its tent walls should have been given as 12ft not 12m. Amanda Sharp’s surname sometimes appeared wrongly in the piece as Smart (All the fun of the fair, 3 October, page 34). Link
October 15, 2009 – 8:00 am
A reply to a question in Notes & Queries yesterday recommended purchasing lion and tiger urine from Chester Zoo to stop neighbourhood cats from urinating in a vegetable patch (G2, page 17). Chester Zoo would like to forestall requests for its big cats’ urine: it asks us to make clear that it does not in fact sell either tiger or lion urine. Many years ago the zoo sold elephant dung, but it no longer does. Link
October 9, 2009 – 8:00 am
A report told of a German magazine’s plan to stop using professional models. It carried the headline Keine Modelle bitte! (6 October, page 17). Modelle is used when talking about architectural models, prototypes and the like. In current German usage, where anglicisms abound, our headline would be: Keine Models bitte! The name of British Vogue’s editor was also misspelled. She is Alexandra Shulman. Link
October 7, 2009 – 8:00 am
Steve Bunce: In Bunce takes the biscuit (1 October, page 12, Sport) we wrongly suggested that Steve Bunce, the boxing commentator, controlled the website bringbackbunce.net and had claimed on the site to have high-profile supporters, including Bertie Ahern and David Blunkett. We accept that Mr Bunce could not have made any such claims, as he did not set up and does not control this website. We apologise to Mr Bunce for the error. Link
October 5, 2009 – 8:00 am
Writing from memory in a piece defending his work against critics – Why my book is not sexist, 21 September, page 21, G2 – Stephen Bayley said that he had been accused by the presenter of BBC Woman’s Hour of producing a “coffee-table compendium of filth for perverts”. Jenni Murray has objected that she would never use the word compendium (the same goes for filth). The correct wording of the question she posed in the 9 September programme was: “Has he reclaimed images of the female body or produced a coffee-table playground for perverts?” Link
September 29, 2009 – 8:00 am
Editing changes left a piece saying that the role of the TV show Guiding Light in US culture “cannot be underplayed”, when what it meant was that it could not be overplayed or overstated (Credits roll on the longest-running soap, 21 September, page 3, G2). Link
September 28, 2009 – 8:00 am
In one respect or another, we got at least three leaders wrong yesterday. Silvio Berlusconi is prime minister of Italy, not president, and Stephen Carter is not Canada’s prime minister, though Stephen Harper is (Obama takes 41 minutes to put paid to the Bush years, page 8). In this very column, the Danish prime minister was named as Larks Loekke Rasmussen. He is Lars (Corrections and clarifications, page 36). Link
September 22, 2009 – 8:00 am
A consumer column described the tribulations of a customer of a Bromley firm operating under the name Dial-A-Lock and belonging to the Dial Group of emergency repair firms. But to illustrate the column, we used an image of a company about which we had received no complaint, Dial-A-Lock Master Locksmith (dialalock.com), which operates in the Liverpool area, belongs to the Association of Master Locksmiths, and is entirely unrelated to the Bromley firm. We apologise for confusing the two (Dear Anna: Dial-A-Lock leaves customer out in the cold, 14 August, guardian.co.uk). Link
September 18, 2009 – 8:00 am
In case you hadn’t noticed, I recently added a “What I’m Reading” sidebar to the site. It’s over there to the right. I link to relevant articles that I find interesting or of note. And now, every once in a while, I’ll post a round-up of some of those links to make sure you don’t miss out on them. They’re all worth checking out. Enjoy.
Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two-Decade Low – Pew Research Center
pewresearch.org | September 14, 2009
More bad news re: trust and accuracy.
DISPUTATIONS: Spy Games | The New Republic
The New Republic | September 16, 2009
Victor Navasky demands satisfaction from The New Republic.
FACTS, ERRORS AND THE KINDLE | More Intelligent Life
moreintelligentlife.com | September 4, 2009
I’m interviewed in this Economist story about book errors and corrections.
Accidental headline of the year | Media Monkey | Media | guardian.co.uk
Guardian | September 1, 2009
A horror story involving the correction of a published scientific article – Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
stat.columbia.edu | August 25, 2009
September 17, 2009 – 8:00 am
A review mistakenly gave credit for a website called everythingisterrible.com to one Jacob Anderson (Internet: Everything Is Terrible, 12 September, page 33, Guide). EIT advises us that its team has never heard of Mr Anderson and that he did not originate the site. Link
September 16, 2009 – 8:00 am
To judge from yesterday’s page 34, there was some post-lunch napping by us on Sunday. This column referred to “neices”, and a leader comment (In praise of . . . Norman Borlaug) termed its subject “a famer’s son from Iowa”. Link
September 15, 2009 – 8:00 am
A report on Downing Street’s posthumous apology to Alan Turing – the gay mathematician who took his own life two years after being prosecuted for indecency in 1952 and chemically castrated – said that the man often considered the father of modern computer science had no surviving family. In fact, his family includes three neices, a nephew and his mother, and the children and other family members of this second generation (PM’s apology to codebreaker: we were inhumane, 11 September, page 7). Link
September 11, 2009 – 8:00 am
An article headlined New homeowners: ‘Falling market helped us’, should have made clear, in accordance with the Guardian’s editorial code, that the journalist who wrote it is related to one of the homebuyers featured (26 August, page 7). Link
September 8, 2009 – 8:00 am
Clare Burstall, former director of the National Foundation for Educational Research, whose birthday we recently listed, died in 2006 (3 September, page 33). Link
September 2, 2009 – 8:00 am
William Clark, co-founder of The Baby Einstein Company, has asked us to correct several mistakes in a story headlined Baby genius videos make money, not sense (14 July, page 3, Education). The company was launched in 1996 not 1997. The video Baby Mozart was released in 1998, not 2000. Baby da Vinci was produced after Disney bought the company in 2001, not by the Clarks. With regard to 2001 turnover, Clark informs us that sales were $17.6m, not $25m as we said. Link
September 1, 2009 – 8:00 am
A taste test of various foods described a sample from Anila’s Curry Sauces as starting well but having "a slightly dirty aftertaste". Our reviewer meant to convey that the aftertaste was odd – not to imply that food hygiene might be poor (Look, no gluten! 19 August, page 14, G2). Link
August 27, 2009 – 8:00 am
Yesterday’s centre-spread photo was said by its caption to show a great white shark snapping up a seal pup in False Bay, South Africa. In fact, a rubber seal decoy had been used to attract the shark (Eyewitness: Seal Island, South Africa, pages 18-19). Link
August 25, 2009 – 8:00 am
Editing changes resulted in a story saying that a five-star Berlin hotel was offering to accept a work of art, rather than money, as payment from artists seeking bed and board. Artists can indeed stay, but the setting is not a hotel. It is a suite dedicated to this project at an art institute (Room service: Berlin hotel tells artists to pay for stay with artwork, not cash, 10 August, page 13). Link
August 24, 2009 – 8:00 am
A comment piece about achievement and frailty in the lives of artistic greats mentioned Wagner’s reminder to his favourite Vienna chambermaid to wear purple knickers next time they met. A Wagner expert points out that the pants in question were pink (To understand genius, forget the purple knickers, 19 August, page 28). Link
Reminds me of this correction from last year.
August 18, 2009 – 8:00 am
The £1.99 Lawson’s Dry Hills Marlborough Riesling 2006 listed in the wine column isn’t quite the bargain we made out (Wine, page 45, Weekend, 15 August). Minus its typographical error the price is £9.99, and, contrary to information supplied to us, Majestic is not stocking it. The Colchester Wine Company (thewinecompany.co.uk) does have a supply, albeit limited. Link
August 17, 2009 – 8:00 am
In a report on an increase in the incidence of oral cancer among Britons in their 40s, we should have quoted a Cancer Research UK press release as saying that, along with tobacco and alcohol use, risk factors for oral cancers include "a diet low in fruit and vegetables, and a sexually transmitted infection called the human papilloma virus (HPV)". Instead, our report combined these two factors, so that the charity was wrongly quoted as stating that a diet deficient in fruit and vegetables was partly to blame for the growth of HPV (Heavy drinking culture blamed for surge in oral cancers, 11 August, page 9).
Link
August 17, 2009 – 8:00 am
A report about child trafficking in Iraq identified the main countries into which children are sold as Jordan, Turkey, Syria, Switzerland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Sweden. The assertion appeared next to comments from an Iraqi police officer. However, information about these destinations was provided by an anonymous source involved in child trafficking who was quoted later in the story, and we have not been able to verify his claims in relation to all of the European countries listed. A 2007 report by the Heartland Alliance refers to evidence that trafficked women and children from Iraq were destined for five European countries: Turkey, Greece, Italy, France and the UK (Babies for sale: trafficking crisis grows as gangs exploit poor Iraqi families and corrupt system, 6 April, page 14). Link
