Tag Archives: multiple errors

Martha’s empire

March 23, 2009 – 8:00 am

torstar1A March 14 article about Martha Stewart included incorrect information. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia has a channel on Sirius Satellite Radio, Stewart does not own a radio station. Stewart’s housewares line is currently available in Macy’s stores. Stewart does not have an eco-flooring company but is participating in a multi-year agreement with FLOR, Inc. The Martha Stewart Show airs on the Fine Living Network, not on the Food Network or CBC television. Link

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“Numerous errors,” but we’ll only tell you about one

March 20, 2009 – 8:00 am

torontosunOOPS!
We have egg on our face over yesterday’s front page about new “street eats” in the city. Our graphic contained numerous errors, including misspelling Eglinton Ave. We apologize to our readers and cartographers everywhere. Link

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Minnesota student admits he never shared a “crème brulee torte” with Hillary Clinton

March 5, 2009 – 8:00 am

minnesotadailyCity Pages, a weekly in Minneapolis/St. Paul, highlighted this remarkable Editor’s Note from the Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Minnesota:

Editor’s note: Some of the claims made by Charles Carlson included in this article were later found to be untrue. Several months after this story was printed, Carlson admitted he had lied about officiating tennis in the Beijing Olympics, and had also lied about growing up in England and having a personal connection to the Clintons. Hillary Clinton never shared her crème brulee torte with him. Carlson grew up in the United States–not in England. Carlson claims he was a communications director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, but The Minnesota Daily has been unable to independently verify this. See a Daily article about Carlson on March 2 for details about these inaccuracies.

It comes six months after the Daily published a a rather fawning piece about Carlson. The Note was published in conjunction with a Daily report that detailed Carlson’s troubled relationship with the truth. From the original Daily piece about him:

He was a Beijing Olympics tennis official and is a University graduate student, GLBT rights advocate and director of operations at a Minneapolis architecture firm. Is there anything Charles Carlson doesn’t do?

Um, tell the truth? From the Daily’s investigation into his background:

Just days before DFL caucusing begins for Minneapolis City Council elections, Charles Carlson — University of Minnesota student and Minnesota representative at the Democratic National Convention — said he will announce Monday his withdrawal from the Ward 2 council member race following a series of lies regarding his past and his qualifications.
An investigation by The Minnesota Daily found that Carlson lied on several occasions concerning items such as his college education at Princeton University and where he grew up.
Carlson, who speaks with an English accent, previously claimed he grew up in Ramsgate, England, but admitted recently that he grew up in the United States.
The Daily confirmed that Carlson attended elementary school, middle schools and high schools throughout Minnesota, including Northfield High School, where a former classmate said Carlson did not have an accent. Also, the classmate did not have any knowledge of Carlson previously living in England.
In a Feb. 1 Daily article, Carlson said his English background would help him connect with the 2nd Ward’s immigrant population.
Carlson also provided the Daily with two fraudulent transcripts to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and Princeton University. These schools, along with two other English schools he claimed to have attended, had no record of Carlson.
Carlson said he has been diagnosed with schizophrenia affective disorder, which impacts an individual’s ability to accurately judge reality…

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Beware the rich veins of gas

March 4, 2009 – 8:00 am

nytbanner1An article on the Square Feet pages on Wednesday about several buildings in New York City that are adding cogeneration systems to create electricity and capture otherwise wasted energy included several errors.
The buildings’ generators use wasted heat to produce steam to heat and cool the buildings; they do not use excess steam. (The headline also included the error.)
The unit of electricity that is transmitted to customers is a watt, not a volt.
The main reason that only 40 percent of electricity reaches the consumer is because much of it is lost when the electricity is generated; the losses do not come solely during the transmission and distribution of the electricity.
Natural gas in Manhattan is found in gas lines — not “rich veins” — that run beneath the city. Link

Thanks, David!

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Fuzzy numbers etc.

February 27, 2009 – 8:00 am

There were three computation errors in Christopher Hayes’s March 2 “Cut the Military Budget.” The Pentagon budget request represents a 13 (not 12) percent increase over last year’s budget. The reported Obama Defense Department appropriation would represent a 2.2 percent increase over last year’s budget (not 8 percent). And regarding the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, $3.4 billion divided by 95,000 works out to $35,800 per job (not $35.8 million). So it is not true that “more jobs would be created by hiring people to shred the money.” We deeply regret the errors and have FedExed a new abacus to our Washington bureau. Link

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Rest is fine

February 23, 2009 – 8:00 am

slateIn the Feb. 16 “Television,” Colin Fleming originally misidentified one of the Top Gearhosts who was knocking out his car windows in a segment of the show. He also stated that no one knows the identity of the character Stig, but his name was revealed by a British newspaper in January. He also misstated the cost of the Bugatti Veyron, incorrectly stated that the hosts had to make their way across the Sahara desert when it was the Kalahari, and misspelled the Opel Kadett. Slate would like to thank the many, many Top Gear enthusiasts who pointed out the errors in this article. Link

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Rest is fine

February 11, 2009 – 8:00 am

nytbanner1Because of editing errors, a video games column on Saturday about a legal dispute between Blizzard Entertainment, the creator of the World of Warcraft game, and the makers of a “bot” program called Glider that plays the game automatically, gave an incomplete quotation from a lawyer representing Glider’s creator, Michael Donnelly, and misattributed a statement about his approach to the case.
The lawyer, Lance C. Venable, was quoted as saying that he recognized that his client was “a pretty unsympathetic character.” The full quotation from Mr. Venable was: “My client is a pretty unsympathetic character. If you look at this case from the very narrow lens of it being a case of Blizzard versus a botter, I completely understand why people are sympathetic to Blizzard’s position.”
In addition, while Mr. Venable compared the case to hypothetical examples in other industries, it is the view of the writer of the column — not Mr. Venable — that as the case nears the appeals process, “it’s his job to make the most dire slippery-slope argument possible.”
And a picture caption, using information from Blizzard, misstated the name of the character from the game that was shown. It is the Lich King — not Frostmourne, the name of the sword he was shown carrying. Link

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Rest is fine

January 26, 2009 – 8:00 am

nytbanner1A listing on Jan. 11 about 44 Places to Go in 2009 included several errors. (Go to Interactive Listing)
The entry about Las Vegas (No. 5) misspelled the surname of the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is Dr. R. Keith Schwer, not Scher. (Go to Featured Article)
The Dakar, Senegal, entry (No. 10) misspelled part of the name of a cultural center. It is the Institut Français Léopold Sédar Senghor, not Sédor.
The Monument Valley entry (No. 27) located the park incorrectly. It is in northeast Arizona, with a small section extending into Utah; it is not in northwest Arizona.
And the Stockholm entry (No. 35, on the Web site) misspelled the surname of a Finnish architect and designer. He is Alvar Aalto, not Alto. Link

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Lessons in geography etc.

January 22, 2009 – 8:00 am

latimesPennsylvania Avenue: A map accompanying an article in Tuesday’s Section A about historic landmarks along Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue showed wrong locations for an FBI building and the Willard Hotel. The FBI headquarters was shown in its present location on 9th Street, but at the time the bureau was spying on Martin Luther King it was at the Department of Justice, across the street. The Willard Hotel, where President Lincoln stayed before his first inauguration and where state delegates met in an attempt to prevent civil war, was shown at 10th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. It is at 14th Street and Pennsylvania. Also, a photo caption with that article gave an incorrect date of President Eisenhower’s inaugural parade. It was Jan. 20, 1953, not Jan. 21. Link

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But she is a girl

January 16, 2009 – 8:00 am

fresnobeeA headline on Page 2 of Wednesday’s Local & State section incorrectly reported that a 4-year-old girl had been thrown from a truck. The girl was riding in a car, not a truck; her father was thrown from the vehicle, but she was not. Their car collided with a pickup.

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Couples not welcome

January 16, 2009 – 8:00 am

nytbanner1An article on Monday about a proposed Hebrew charter school in Brooklyn included, in some editions, a fictitious anecdote about one of the school’s backers, the financier Michael H. Steinhardt, who has given millions to programs that raise Jewish identity among young people. Although a family representative for Mr. Steinhardt confirmed the anecdote, Mr. Steinhardt does not in fact offer his villa in Anguilla to honeymooning Jewish couples who meet on a travel program he supports. (Go to Article) (The error also appeared on May 25 in a Sunday Styles article about cultural tourism programs for young people that often result in romantic matches.)

Because of an editing error, Monday’s article also referred incorrectly in some copies to another dual-language city school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn. It is a public school run by the city, not an independent charter school. Link

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Not exactly a help with sales

January 15, 2009 – 8:00 am

ottawa_citizenA banner outside one of Holitzner Homes’ model townhomes in Kanata advertising a $10,000 signing bonus has been in place for a year; it was not put up “before New Year’s.” The Holitzner sales office was closed between Dec. 23 and Jan. 1, which is why there were no visitors to the office over the Christmas period, not because buyers were not in a buying mood during the holidays. Incorrect information appeared Saturday in an article on page I1 and a photo caption on page I2. Link

Thanks, Doug!

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Rest is fine

January 15, 2009 – 8:00 am

seattletimesA previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Cell Therapeutics’ market capitalization is about $7 million, rather than $27 million, as well as incorrectly stated that if Starbucks (which had a difficult 2008 but only lost half its stock value) gave its top five officers a bonus equal to one-seventh of its market cap, the execs would walk off with a billion dollars, rather than if its top five officers a bonus equal to one-twentyseventh of its market cap, the execs would walk off with about $270 million. The story also incorrectly stated that Bianco had the highest base salary of all the local biotech leaders, including companies with 120 times the market value of Cell Therapeutics. Bianco had the highest base salary of all the local biotech leaders, including companies with 30 times the market value of Cell Therapeutics. Link

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Naming names

January 12, 2009 – 8:00 am

guardian1The poet in Anthony Powell’s A Question of Upbringing is Mark (not William) Members; the name of another character is Quiggin, not Quiggan; and the country residence is Glimber, not Glimper (Digested classics, 3 January, page 17, Review). Link

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Fuzzy numbers etc.

January 8, 2009 – 8:00 am

westaustralianTime warp again: A gremlin has been switching headings in our This Week in The West Australian column (page 26, January 6; page 49, January 7). Lt-Governor Sir James Mitchell was speaking in 1934, which was 75 years ago, not 100; Sister Kate was awarded an MBE in 1934, which was 75 years ago, not 100; and the Messina earthquake happened a century ago, not 75 years ago as perpetrated by our gremlin.

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No fireworks, but there were corrections

January 6, 2009 – 8:00 am

columbus-dispatchIn a January 1 story about new year’s celebrations, the Columbus Dispatch reported that there were fireworks at First Night Columbus’ countdown celebration. Unfortunately, the fireworks didn’t go off. That led to two corrections and a corrective article. First correction:

There were no fireworks Downtown on New Year’s Eve for First Night Columbus. (For an explanation about why, see Page B2 in today’s paper.) Because of incorrect information provided by the organization and an early press deadline, a story that ran on Page A1 yesterday was incorrect. Link

Corrective article:

People expecting fireworks at First Night Columbus’ countdown to midnight on New Year’s Eve had to be satisfied with confetti cannons instead.
Organizers originally had intended to shoot off stadium fireworks near the Downtown celebration’s new midnight location at Broad and High streets, but then found out that they needed a permit, First Night spokeswoman Lindsey Weiker said.
Unable to get a permit at the last minute, the group changed its schedule lineup, but it had trouble spreading the word. “It was just a lot of miscommunication,” Weiker said.
For years, the event featured a people’s procession that led to a fireworks show at midnight at Genoa Park on the west bank of the Scioto River, said Mike Collins, First Night director.
But with a new location of the grand-finale extravaganza this year and the recent closing of the Town Street bridge, the group no longer had the option of shooting fireworks over the river, Collins said.
– Encarnacion Pyle

Second correction (to corrective article):

The need for a permit was not a factor in the decision to use confetti cannons instead of stadium fireworks at First Night Columbus’ countdown to midnight. A story on Page B2 of yesterday’s Metro & State section was not clear in explaining that organizers knew they didn’t have a place to set off fireworks once the Town Street bridge was closed. Link

Thanks, Ray!

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Rest is fine

December 22, 2008 – 8:00 am

Charitable gifts: A Health section article Monday about gifts of health-themed charitable donations said that the transaction fee going to an online distributor of such donations, CharityGiftCertificates.org, can be as high as 15%. In fact, only 7% plus a 50-cent flat fee goes to CharityGiftCertificates.org; 3% goes to the credit card company and up to 5% to third-party marketers, if involved. And the flat fees charged by other services can represent higher percentages of a gift depending upon the amount given. The article also quoted the founder of another such distributor, Erik Marks of TisBest.org, as saying that if the recipient of the gift certificate never logs on to select a charity, the distributor then keeps the money, spending it as it sees fit. In the case of CharityGiftCertificates.org, unallocated monies go to its Special Kids Fund. The article also quoted Amanda Gamble, an etiquette columnist in Indianapolis, as saying that a gift to a children’s health charity is always well-received. However, it omitted her first name and occupation. Additionally, the article said that Internet charity gift-card services started in 2007. Some have operated since 2004. Link

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Rest is fine

November 24, 2008 – 8:00 am

An obituary on Wednesday about Irving Brecher, a writer for vaudeville, movies and television, included several errors.
The given name of a producer whom Mr. Brecher angered, telling him that one of his films had not been released but had escaped, was misspelled. He was Darryl Zanuck, not Daryl.
Part of a line written by Mr. Brecher and spoken by a rain-drenched Groucho Marx in the film “At the Circus” was misstated. The line is, “If I were any drier, I’d drown,” not “I’d be drowning.”
And Mervyn LeRoy, for whom Mr. Brecher wrote scripts, was not the head of production at M.G.M., though many sources attributed that position to him. (He was, however, considered the most prominent of the studio’s producers and directors.) Link

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Be he did live there

November 21, 2008 – 8:00 am

Multi-generational living: A story in Saturday’s Home section on “granny flats” said that USC gerontology professor Jon Pynoos’ father lived on his property and received end-of-life care there for five years. It was Pynoos’ father-in-law, not father, who lived in the guesthouse, and he was not given end-of-life care there. The remodeling described, including leveling the floor and installing grab bars, was rather so his father-in-law could function independently in the guesthouse. Link

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Rest is fine

November 19, 2008 – 8:00 am

Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about a corruption prosecution against Chen Shui-bian, the former president of Taiwan, misstated the circumstances of his departure from office. He stepped down after serving the maximum two terms; he was not voted out in the elections held in March.
The article also misstated the years that Ma Ying-jeou, Mr. Chen’s successor, was the mayor of Taipei, the capital. Mr. Ma served from 1998 to 2006; he was not the mayor last year.
And the article misstated the effect of an indictment against Mr. Ma last year on charges he had misused funds as mayor. The indictment forced him to step down temporarily as chairman of the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, not as mayor. (As the article correctly noted, Taiwan’s Supreme Court cleared Mr. Ma of the charges, which allowed him to run for president.) Link

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Incorrect since 1980

October 30, 2008 – 11:12 am

An article in some editions on Wednesday about Fordham University’s plan to give an ethics prize to Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer misspelled the surname of another Supreme Court justice who received the award in 2001. She is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not Ginsberg. The Times has misspelled her name at least two dozen times since 1980; this is the first correction the paper has published. Link

I contacted Greg Brock, the Times senior editor in charge of corrections, for some background. Here’s what he said:

What’s interesting is that Ginsburg has never complained. And oddly, no one in the Washington bureau ever noticed it. Not even Linda Greenhouse, our recently departed court reporter. (Though Linda never misspelled it.) And I can find only one modern-day misspelling from the Washington bureau.
Sometimes, when we keep misspelling a name, I take the time just to see how many times we have misspelled it. I remember Attorney General Gonzales was a problem for a while.
About a year ago, we were doing more of these archive searches and including references in some corrections, but we decided to ease up. It can come across as a sledge hammer if we’re not careful. So we now try to use it when we want to emphasize the point. In this case, since a reader pointed out that we had never corrected it, it seemed worth owning up to that.

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Rest is fine

October 29, 2008 – 8:00 am

Lodgings with macabre pasts: An article in Sunday’s Travel section on a B&B at Lizzie Borden’s former home misidentified one of the 1892 slaying victims as Borden’s mother, Sarah. The victim was Borden’s stepmother, Abby. The article also called Borden’s older sister her younger sister. An accompanying article about local lodgings said Sam Cooke died at the Hacienda Hotel in El Segundo. It was the Hacienda Motel on South Figueroa Street in South Los Angeles. Link

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Naming names

October 27, 2008 – 8:00 am

The cover article on Page 52 this weekend about Senator John McCain’s campaign misspells the given name of Mr. McCain’s fellow senator from Arizona and the surname of the governor of Florida, both McCain supporters. The other Arizona senator is Jon Kyl, not John, and the Florida governor is Charlie Crist, not Christ. The article also misstates the name of the Ohio city where some McCain campaign staff members first met with Mr. McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. It is Middletown, not Middleton. And the article overstates the duties of Tucker Eskew, a member of Ms. Palin’s team. He is officially her counselor, not her chief of staff, though campaign officials say that he performs many of the same duties. Link

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Rest is fine

October 9, 2008 – 8:00 am

There were several errors in the obituary of the saxophonist Pat Crumly [7 October].
Crumly died on 28 September, not 29 September. He was married three times, not twice, the third time to Hannah Jackson in 1994. Ronnie Scott did not add him to his own quartet – the Ronnie Scott’s Legacy Band was not Scott’s Quartet with Patrick replacing the leader but was a band set up to celebrate the legacy of Ronnie Scott. The Ronnie Scott Legacy band did not play in Athens; it was Crumly’s own quartet, the Pat Crumly Quartet.
When he appeared in Beirut and Kurdistan, it was with Ilham Al Madfai, the Iraqi musician and singer, and his band. Link

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Rest is fine

October 6, 2008 – 8:00 am

Sarah Palin e-mail: An article in Tuesday’s Section A about Anne Kilkenny, a local government watchdog in Wasilla, Alaska, whose e-mailed critique of vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin ended up posted widely on the Internet, reported that the e-mail was 24,000 words. It was 2,400 words. The article also reported Kilkenny’s age as 57; she is 59. Her son Leif’s name was misspelled as Lief, and he is 18, not 17. It also said her driveway was made of concrete. It is made of asphalt. Link

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