A report on the latest attack on Andres Serrano’s controversial work Piss Christ inadvertently referred to the late US Republican Senator Jesse Helms as Jesse James (Hit with a hammer and slashed with an ice pick. Anti-blasphemy attack on Piss Christ, 19 April, page 3). Link Report an error
A column poked fun at John Bercow, current Speaker of the House of Commons, for having at the age of 23 written a piece for a student magazine headed The John Bercow Guide to Understanding Women. In fact, he was the object of the magazine's lampoon (Pass notes No 2,957, 12 April, page 3, G2). [...]
Reports on the recent warm weather went a bit astray on temperature conversion and geography. An article about Jersey's claim to be the warmest place "in the British Isles" – Scilly pours cold water on Jersey's warmer boast, 11 April, page 7 – rendered the island's mean minimum temperature of 8.9C as (a freezing) 32F. [...]
Our Media section went to press on Friday 25 February with its Media Monkey's Diary noting (external) blogging and tweeting to the effect that Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor, was not in evidence during the Libya upheavals because he was on a half-term skiing trip. When our section appeared in Monday's paper, Jeremy Bowen [...]
The pope's 2010 visit to Britain was put at an awesome £7bn in early editions of a report on the forthcoming state visit by Barack and Michelle Obama. That was meant to be £7m (Watch out for the corgis, 18 February, page 3). Link Report an error
There were two errors in supermarket prices given in reports on the government's alcohol policy and in a Datablog item. We said that Asda sold Grant's whisky for £11 in its stores just before Christmas. The supermarket has asked us to make clear that the lowest price for Grant's whisky in that period was £15.97, [...]
In a story about the controversy regarding Michelle Obama's decision to wear a British rather than an American designer dress to a US state event we incorrectly stated that Michael Kors was one of two designers "who criticised the first lady" for doing so. He has asked us to make clear that he has never [...]
An item referring to the Channel 4 current affairs and comedy show 10 O'Clock Live said an Autocue had failed last week when Lauren Laverne and Charlie Brooker were on camera and "neither of them could hold things together". In fact this segment was a pre-recorded, scripted sketch used to demonstrate the perils of live [...]
A quote by Tzipi Livni, Israel's former foreign minister, within a panel that formed part of the Palestine papers, was cut in a way that may have given a misleading impression. The quote appeared as: "The Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day [...]
Donald Rumsfeld was wrongly described as a former US secretary of state in a report about his newly published memoirs. He was defence secretary in George W Bush's administration (Rumsfeld book admits to mistakes over Iraq WMD sites and feeling troubled over torture, 8 February, page 17). Link Report an error
The song is Hey, Soul Sister by Train, not Train by Soul Sister as we had it in a report on the overtaking of rock'n'roll by hip-hop (RIP rock'n'roll? Professor of pop reads the last rites as hip-hop takes over the charts, 11 January, page 3). Link Report an error
Because of an editing error, we seemed to translate the following phrase – "On me prete la reputation d'etre un auteur d'apparance legere" – as, "I'm reputed to be a lightly apparelled author". French speakers will be relieved to hear that the phrase in the translator's copy was, "I'm said to be an apparently 'light' [...]
A panel examining how gun laws vary around the world contained a number of errors. It was wrong to assert "there is little enforcement of the strict laws" in Japan, and that in Switzerland "gun crime is so low that statistics are not kept"; Swiss statistics on gun crime do exist. In the UK, the [...]
The following may appear to be an attempt by this column to introduce a Christmas puzzle; not so. It is just a little complicated. On 20 December we repeated the 17 December radio and digital TV listings, originally published on 16 December in a slightly different form. While TV listings in G2 are normally published [...]
Contrary to a claim made in a leaked US diplomatic cable whose contents we reported, Sicko – a documentary by film-maker Michael Moore – was not banned in Cuba. The film, which examines US healthcare through comparisons with some countries' publicly funded systems, including Cuba's, was in fact shown in film theatres throughout the island [...]
Michael Beer's nickname is Frosty, not Frothy as a headline said of the Australian spin bowler (Name: Beer; Nickname: Frothy . . . , 11 December, page 1, Sport). Link Report an error
A long and self-critical quote was attributed to Picasso in a column examining the value of this artist's work. However, the interview in which the painter supposedly spoke – saying he did not "consider myself an artist in the ancient sense of the word" – is widely thought by art experts to have been fabricated [...]
No doubt Bill Cash MP has occasionally felt ill at some aspects of the European Union, but it is unlikely that he could be accurately described as an "ultra-Euroseptic" as he appeared in a political briefing examining rightwing politicians (Centrist politics is in vogue – but will it be all right on the right, 9 [...]
Screwing up is understandable, but when you repeatedly screw up the same way you've got a problem. At almost every stage of this story the actors involved were collapsing under the weight of their own slavish obedience to a fundamentally broken… well… 'system' is the right word, but I find myself toying with 'ideology'. The [...]
An obituary of John Bulloch, the Independent and Daily Telegraph foreign correspondent, suggested that among his qualities was an "obelisk stare". He was physically a big man but it was more a basilisk stare that he deployed when "confronted with roadblocks or recalcitrant guerillas, or naive young journalists" (Obituary, 6 December, page 34). Link Report [...]
Owing to an editing error, we said that Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall slept with more than 1,000 women in a three-year period during the mid-80s. That was meant to be more than 1,000 a year, based on his estimate of an average of three such encounters a day, as stated elsewhere in our stories [...]
"How does that work exactly?" asked a reader, on being informed in a column that "an unauthorised autobiography of London's mayor" was in the works. This was an editing error (Diary, 25 November, page 39). Link Report an error
An article – headlined WikiLeaks cables reveal that Foreign Office lied to parliament over Diego Garcia – could have been taken to suggest that Chris Bryant MP lied to parliament in his former post of Foreign Office minister. That is not the case. We apologise to Mr Bryant for suggesting otherwise (2 December, guardian.co.uk). Link [...]
In two articles, 8 October and 15 November, examining the merger of the US-based website The Daily Beast with Newsweek, there were a series of errors and basic failings of journalistic practice. We incorrectly said that the Daily Beast's audience was "tiny". The site's figures for unique users as measured by the Nielsen research organisation [...]
Tina followers went to town on a caption that appeared in early editions of Saturday's paper (Wealthy Swiss threaten to leave if their taxes are raised, 27 November, page 32). Among the examples: "I am pleased to read today that Tuna Turner may be seeking a move from the land-locked tax haven of Switzerland . [...]
