… My program scripts are combed through for most of Monday by a team of researchers. Even then, on several occasions our young web producer has spotted errors that somehow slipped through the net.

On the whole, the fact-checking system works pretty well. In a hundred-odd programs, we’ve made seven mistakes that we’re aware of – four of them, frankly, trivial. The three others resulted in on-air corrections as well as an acknowledgment of the error on our website.

In two of those, the problem was that the mistake wasn’t obvious. A good fact-checker has to look at a statement that looks right, and ask herself – could that be wrong?

For example, I said that public servant Godwin Grech denied on oath that he’d passed on the contents of an email to a reporter. Almost every journalist who was writing about the Grech affair made the same mistake, as did Malcolm Turnbull, multiple times. Media Watch didn’t think to check it on the day. Only afterwards did a viewer point out to us that most Senate committees, including the one at which Grech was giving evidence, don’t administer oaths.

On another occasion, we accused journalists of getting someone’s name wrong. They were using her second name, not her first. We should have thought to ask ourselves, “but does she prefer to use her second name?” We didn’t, but she did, and I got egg on my face.

All this is merely to say that complete accuracy is very difficult indeed to achieve. But my view has always been that up-front corrections and admissions of error increase the credibility of a publication, rather than diminishing it – so long, of course, as they are relatively rare (When I lived in Britain, The Guardian became so notorious for its frequent typos that Private Eye dubbed it ‘The Grauniad’. For those of us of a certain vintage, the name has stuck, irretrievably).

Last week’s Media Watch is a case in point. If Twitter is anything to go by – and I’m honestly not sure if it is or it isn’t – my ‘self-pwning’, as the Twitterati called it, went down a treat.

“Ha ha loved #mediawatch catches jonathon holmes,” (Name spelled wrong, @psychosophonist).

“Nicely self-pwned, @jonaholmesMW.” And many more.

My most celebrated predecessor, Stuart Littlemore, was notoriously reluctant to admit error. Even when the ABC’s Independent Complaints Review Panel found against the program, Littlemore contested the findings on-air. And he famously told the American media-watcher Steve Brill in 1997 that Media Watch had made no errors in the previous two years – a remark that prompted Brill to suggest that Littlemore might be the problem rather than the solution.

Of course, on-air corrections are anathema to broadcasters. Newspapers can bury them in small print, usually at the bottom left of page 2. But an on-air correction is in your face. In that respect, the internet has proved a blessing. Broadcasters like the ABC can put corrections on their webpage, and reckon they’ve done enough …

At Media Watch, we’ve been accused of being ‘the fun police’. I hope we’re not. I’m all for vigour and feistiness, humour and wit. But people shouldn’t be unfairly victimised for the amusement of others. And when the media makes mistakes, it should fess up – even without being forced to by lawyers or regulators.

When that happens, Media Watch won’t be needed any more. And pigs will fly.

In early March, it aired a scathing seven minute report about Australian technology news journalist and publisher David Richards. It seems that a significant number of stories posted with his byline on his websites were been taken word-for-word from news outlets such as PC Magazine, the Daily Telegraph, etc.

When contacted by Media Watch, Richards explained that he had licensing agreements with publishers that enable him to use their copy. Media Watch then showed that to be false. So Richards offered another explanation:

We believe that a former employee who had access to our content engine has changed bylines, dates on stories and posted stories without our knowledge in an effort to discredit us.

Right. The story is called the “Phantom of the Internet” and it’s well worth a view. The transcript and video are here on the Media Watch site. YouTube is below. Seriously, watch it.