An article about the investigation into the abduction and death of Milly Dowler (News of the World hacked Milly Dowler’s phone during police hunt, 5 July, page 1) stated that voicemail “messages were deleted by [NoW] journalists in the first few days after Milly’s disappearance in order to free up space for more messages. As a result friends and relatives of Milly concluded wrongly that she might still be alive.” Since this story was published new evidence – as reported in the Guardian of 10 December – has led the Metropolitan police to believe that this was unlikely to have been correct and that while the News of the World hacked Milly Dowler’s phone the newspaper is unlikely to have been responsible for the deletion of a set of voicemails from the phone that caused her parents to have false hopes that she was alive, according to a Metropolitan police statement made to the Leveson inquiry on 12 December.

Even with the correction appended, one of the subheads on the story still reads, “Deleted voicemails gave family false hope”. That seems to implicate the NoW. The Guardian has been criticized for this routine correction to a major allegation. Storyful has a look at some reaction from former NoW journalists.

Writing in the Independent, Stephen Glover offered this assessment:

Some people might think The Guardian owes us a more comprehensive apology than a brief posting at the top of an online article published five months ago. But the paper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, does not like apologising since to do so would suggest that, even though he inhabits the upper reaches of Mount Olympus, he is made of flesh and blood like the rest of us. He did carry a story in Saturday’s paper under the headline “Police logs raise questions over the deletion of Dowler voicemails”, but it did not contain the blunt admission of error conveyed by the posting, far less an apology. Ironically, it was co-written by Nick Davies, one of the co-authors of the 4 July article.

Thanks, Norman!

A newspaper story dutifully crossing its “T’s” and dotting its “I’s” can be a powerful tool in a community, a force for tremendous good. When it gets key facts wrong, however, it can inflict tremendous harm.
In the case of one Tuesday story (“Sexual harassment case filed against Dad’s Bar-B-Que”), The Anniston Star got a major fact wrong. It incorrectly reported that the owner of Dad’s Bar-B-Que also owns the Top o’ the River restaurant. That is wrong. The owner of Anniston’s Top o’ the River is in no way affiliated with the restaurant that is currently the subject of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit.
The Star regrets the error and apologizes to Top o’ the River, its ownership and employees for this mistake.
The Star misinterpreted a state database of business ownership. The fault lies not with the database but with us. Once alerted to the error Tuesday morning, The Star amended its online version and began a twofold process: (a.) of digging into how this mistake occurred and (b.) of taking steps to ensure it is not repeated.
Errors of this magnitude happen occasionally at The Star, just as they do at most other newspapers. That does nothing to lessen the pain, regret and unpleasantness that accompany them; the mood in the newsroom Tuesday was decidedly downcast.
The newspaper is fully dedicated to delivering the news important to its community in a fair, honest and accurate manner. One such vital method is to report our errors and make corrections. Another way is to learn from our mistakes. Rest assured, we remain committed to earning the public’s trust daily.

The wording in the above gives the impression of a hesitant apology. Why not lead with the apology in your words and then offer details about the Press Ombudsman decision?

The original story is no longer available online. No online apology as far as I could find.

Thanks, Doug!

In our article on October 15th on the prisoner exchange between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas, titled “Israel and Palestine: An extraordinary exchange rate”, we wrongly referred to Mustafa Barghouti as a prisoner unlikely to be freed, whereas we meant Marwan Barghouti, whom we also mentioned as a possible future Palestinian leader. We apologise sincerely to Mustafa Barghouti, a widely respected Palestinian politician and analyst, who is not in jail. Link

Thanks, Daniel!

Morrissey had sued the paper.