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.
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
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).
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
A panel accompanying a motor racing article in early editions predicted 70 degrees Celsius at the Hungaroring circuit near Budapest – "hot enough", as a reader pointed out, "to kill the spectators and bog down the cars in a molten race track". Later editions revised this to 26C (Hungaroring circuit and standings, 25 July, page 11, Sport). Link
In a report about iPhone applications we quoted Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple, saying "iPhone is off to a great start – we hope to sell our one-millionth iPhone by the end of its first full quarter of sales – and our new product pipeline is very strong." That statement was not made earlier this month, as we said: it came from an Apple press release dated 25 July 2007. On 21 July Apple said it sold over 5.2m iPhones in the third quarter of 2009 (An app for everything, 29 July, page 4, G2). Link
The Chinese military budget of 480.6bn yuan for 2009 is approximately £43bn, not £43m as a faulty conversion made it in our report, China’s army launches cupcakes offensive, 29 July, page 16. Link
From Reuters:
South African President Jacob Zuma accepted "very substantial damages" from Britain’s Guardian newspaper over an article that wrongly suggested he was a rapist, his lawyers said on Thursday.
The March article, headlined "Get used to a corrupt and chaotic South Africa. But don’t write it off" also alleged Zuma was guilty of corruption and bribery arising out of his involvement in a $5 billion arms deal.
His lawyer Jenny Afia told London’s High Court the allegations were "of the utmost seriousness and totally untrue."
After the settlement Zuma issued a statement in which he said: "What was said was extremely serious, not just for me but for the ANC."
He said he had fought for press freedom all his life, but "we had to take action in this matter because the publication crossed the line."
"Media around the world are obliged to exercise their freedom of speech in a responsible manner," he added.
After libel proceedings began in March, the newspaper published an apology, in which it said the allegation of rape was "included due to an editing error." …
You can read the paper’s apology here.
"Richard Dawkins has even set up a children’s atheist summer camp," a column asserted (These atheists are cunning, 25 July, page 15, Weekend). Camp Quest originated in the US; Dawkins took no part in starting it. Nor did he set up the new UK camp. The organisation says that the Richard Dawkins Foundation made "a small one-off donation to Camp Quest". Link
A for-and-against piece (Topless – or not?, 23 July, page 10, G2) mentioned the French tradition of going topless. Taking a light-hearted stab at Latin, it went on to voice the suspicion that this "cultural more" conveniently allowed French practitioners to look sophisticated and simultaneously acquire an all-over tan. A reader notes that the nominative singular of mores (custom/habits) is actually mos – though it would never be used in this context: "I’m not sure what the solution is for [the sentence in question], but it’s certainly not a matter of the more the merrier." Link
A report from the Guardian:
The trade magazine Nursery Management Today could face a claim for damages after publishing a picture of the wrong nursery to illustrate a story about an investigation into child abuse.
The July/August edition of the title, owned by Hawker Publications, included a picture of the wrong nursery – in which the nursery’s telephone number was clearly visible – with a page five story headlined "Nursery as centre of child abuse investigation".
The article referred to the Little Ted’s day nursery in Laira, Plymouth. However, the picture incorrectly published with the story was of the Little Ted’s day nursery in Rugby, Warwickshire.
When contacted by MediaGuardian.co.uk, the editor of Nursery Management Today, Alison Gordon, said: "Someone has made a very silly mistake – it would be unfair to name them but as editor I can assure you we will make it very, very clear in our next issue that a picture of the wrong Little Ted’s was used. Our apologies go out to Little Ted’s in Rugby.
"I am absolutely appalled by the mistake and have asked him to prepare an apology forthwith for the next publication."
On its website, Nursery Management Today has now published the following "important correction": "On Page 5 of the July/August issue of NMT magazine a picture of Little Ted’s Day Nursery in Rugby was accidentally used instead of the intended picture of Little Ted’s Day Nursery in Laira, Plymouth.
"NMT would like to confirm that the content of the accompanying article and the caption for the picture were correct. NMT magazine would like to apologise to Little Ted’s Day Nursery in Rugby for any unintended confusion this mistake may have caused."…
An interview purporting to be with Banksy in last Saturday’s Guide (One last thing . . . , 18 July, page 98, the Guide) was, it transpires, conducted with someone impersonating the graffiti artist. We apologise to Banksy for this error and for any offence and inconvenience caused. Link
Thanks, Daniel!
An essay exploring whether Iran’s Islamic republic is in its death throes – End of the ayatollahs? 17 July, page 4, G2 – referred to President Jimmy Carter’s "failed Entebbe raid of April 1980" to rescue US hostages in Iran. The failed 1980 mission was Operation Eagle Claw. The rescue of airline passengers at Entebbe, Uganda, was carried out with almost complete success by the Israeli military in July 1976. Link
Rupert Lowe: Our report, Southampton down to their nails as more anguish looms (27 April, page 9, Sport) wrongly suggested that the Football Association was conducting an investigation into where a reported £40m had gone missing when Mr Lowe was chairman of Southampton FC. In fact there was no missing money nor any FA investigation. We apologise unreservedly to Mr Lowe for this error. Link
A passing reference in a sketch yesterday unintentionally brought the life of the actor Peter Sallis to a premature end (Wordsmith Hoggart has his say, page 12). Many apologies. Link
A G2 article called the censorship from Twitter of the hashtag (equivalent to a subject line) "Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy" the worst outrage against freedom of expression ever. We should have noted the explanation provided by Biz Stone, the founder of Twitter, for the problem users encountered searching for #MrsSlocombesPussy: a programming bug means that Twitter’s search function does not work on hashtagged words of more than 16 characters. MrsSlocombesPussy is 17 (The strange case of Mrs Slocombe’s vanishing pussy, 8 June, page 15).
Welcome to Wales, a headline attempted to say in yesterday’s piece about the Ashes series opening in Cardiff (Croeso y Cymru: a top catch for Cardiff, page 9). That should have been Croeso i Gymru. What our version meant was Welcome the Wales. Link
A short item in a football roundup hinted at a £2m move to Middlesbrough for Serbian striker Rajko Purovic (Transfer talk, 11 June, page 4). This story was based on a web hoax. For reasons we have been unable to divine, it appeared in the paper under the byline of a reporter who was on holiday at the time. Link
In the editing process a line was inserted in yesterday’s graphic of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, giving the average centre-to-centre distance from Earth to the moon as 52,500 miles (The moon shot: How they did it, page 14, G2 special issue). It is 238,857 miles. And to clarify references in an article, Apollo 11 was the mission; its command module was Columbia (The first man on the moon, page 4, G2). Link
A news brief reported that a California couple arrived home to find a bear eating a 2lb box of chocolates purloined from their fridge. A sheriff’s sergeant added that the bear had also tried without success to open a bottle of champagne. Our headline – Bear necessity: couple catch chocaholic grizzly, 30 June, page 17 – was wrong, as wild grizzlies have not existed in California for decades. (And our style is chocoholic.) A reader adds: "A grizzly would have no problem opening a bottle of champagne; they can tear a door off a car." Link
The headline on our obituary of Charlie Mariano yesterday, page 30, wrongly referred to the American-born saxophonist and nadaswaram player as a "globe-trotting jazz trumpeter". Link
The Summer Pubs booklet distributed with the paper on 13 June contained some errors. The entry for The Bell Inn at Castle Hedingham (page 59) said that Mighty Oak beers are brewed in Mauldon, when Maldon, in Essex, was meant. The pub also sells Mauldon beers, brewed in Suffolk. The Old White Hart in Lyddington is in Rutland, not Leicestershire (page 58). We said the Swan on the Green, West Peckham, Kent (page 29) was built in 1586 and added that this was 17th year of Henry VIII’s reign. We were wrong on both counts: the king died in 1547 and the pub was built in 1526. We moved the Ty Coch Inn, Porth Dinllaen, Gwynedd, Wales, several miles south: it is in Caernarfon Bay, not Cardigan Bay as we said (page 22). Link
We added years to Alistair Carmichael MP and sent him many happy returns a month early. He will be 44, rather than 54, on his birthday, which is on 15 July (Birthdays, 15 June, page 31).
Wallpaper* is not Conde Nast’s trendier-than-thou lifestyle mag, as we said in a Media Monkey item (13 June, page 4, MediaGuardian). It is IPC’s trendier-than-thou lifestyle mag. Link
Two dukes went wrong in a piece about the political power of walking. It was not the 8th Duke of Devonshire, but the 9th, who insisted on prosecuting ramblers who staged the “Kinder Scout trespass” on his land in 1932 (The march of progress, 8 June, page 14, Great British Walks supplement). Nor was it the 10th Duke of Norfolk who later apologised over the resulting jailings, but the 11th, as the Guardian reported in April 2002 when thousands gathered to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the march: “Suddenly the sea of Gore-Tex parted for a stooped and elderly figure wearing a long tweed coat and brown suede shoes … Andrew Robert Buxton Cavendish, the 11th Duke of Devonshire and the biggest private landowner in the Peak District, had travelled from his stately home at Chatsworth to the village of Hayfield to make a public apology” for the actions of his grandfather. Link
Then:
A correction in this column yesterday seemed to say that the 11th Duke of Norfolk – not the 10th Duke of Norfolk as the original article had it – apologised in 2002 for the 1932 prosecution of protesting ramblers by his grandfather. In fact, as the column went on to say, the 11th Duke of Devonshire made the apology (page 30). Link
