January 23, 2008 – 8:00 am
The Oldham Era of La Grange, KY* published a very long correction after an article about county affairs managed to get many, many facts wrong. The correction is online here. And below are excerpts from the paper’s explanation of the errors:
…this week The Oldham Era is taking a serious error on the chin. We’re bearing [...]
January 17, 2008 – 8:00 am
An article on Jan. 3 about an announcement by the Suffolk County, N.Y., district attorney that he would not retry Martin Tankleff in the 1988 murders of his parents after his conviction was overturned by a state appellate court misquoted, in some copies, Judge Stephen Braslow of Suffolk County Court, who had refused Mr. Tankleff’s [...]
January 14, 2008 – 8:00 am
An obituary Friday about Sir Edmund Hillary, who with Tenzing Norgay became the first to scale Mount Everest, misidentified the route they took to the summit. It is the South Col, not the South Tor. In comparing the feat to one by Charles A. Lindbergh, the obituary misstated Lindbergh’s accomplishment. Though he was the first [...]
January 7, 2008 – 8:00 am
An obituary on Dec. 28 about Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan, misstated the location of her detention at the time her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former president and prime minister, was hanged by the military authorities in April 1979. It was a deserted police training camp at Sihala, Pakistan, a few [...]
January 7, 2008 – 8:00 am
An essay on Dec. 16 about J. M. Coetzee misspelled the given name of the cultural critic who once referred to him as “the Greta Garbo of South African literature.” He is Shaun de Waal, not Sean. The essay also referred incorrectly to the student with whom the protagonist of Coetzee’s novel “Disgrace” was involved [...]
January 7, 2008 – 8:00 am
FishBowlNY spotted a column by John Baer of the Philadelphia Daily News in which the writer fesses up to the mistakes he made in 2007. It’s a cleansing read:
…This is the year-end column in which I admit mistakes I made in the name of truth-seeking - some of them sort of technical, others just plain [...]
January 4, 2008 – 8:00 am
I’m a bit late to this one, but Doug Fisher at Common Sense Journalism spotted a November article in the Wall Street Journal that contained a multitude of errors, some of which have been corrected by the paper. Others remain. Fisher’s post on the mistakes is worth reading, if only to count the mistakes. Fisher [...]
January 2, 2008 – 8:00 am
TOWN OF BURLINGTON — Debra Lange’s problems with loose pit bulls in her neighborhood keep getting exasperated.
Not only has she endured two chases by a neglectful neighbor’s loose canines, a report in Wednesday’s Journal Times on the most recent incident had the facts wrong, incorrectly stating that Lange was the person cited for the loose [...]
December 17, 2007 – 8:00 am
An article last Sunday about incorporating philanthropy into vacations referred incorrectly to a trip planned by Rhonda Wolfond. The part of the trip that involves philanthropy, organized by Artisans of Leisure, includes only Morocco, not Morocco and Paris. It will last nine days, not seven, and cost $20,000 plus air fare, not $50,000. The article [...]
December 10, 2007 – 8:00 am
Several factual errors were in the story, “Group by group: Council doles out some funding,” which appeared in Wednesday’s edition of the Daily Herald-Tribune. Some of the community groups mentioned in the article were identified as receiving money, when in actuality city council did not make any motions to fund them. The groups include the [...]
December 10, 2007 – 8:00 am
Motorcycle tour: An article that appeared Dec. 2 on a motorcycle tour of northwestern China said that the Uygurs are an Uzbek ethnic group. The Uygurs are of Turkic origin, not Uzbek. The town of Aksu was misspelled as Akso. The population of Aksu was mistakenly reported at 3 million; the area has just more [...]
December 4, 2007 – 8:00 am
From the Eastern Courier Messenger of Australia:
AN ARTICLE published on page 4 of the November 14 Eastern Courier Messenger titled ”Anzac Hwy history razed” contained several inaccuracies.
It stated the surgery was passed down to Dr John O’Brien’s son, also named John O’Brien, who consulted from the Kurralta Park surgery until he retired in 1966.
In fact, [...]
November 27, 2007 – 8:00 am
ON NOV. 2, the Journal published a page-one article on Merrill Lynch & Co. that was based on incorrect information that the firm had engaged in off-balance-sheet deals with hedge funds in a possible bid to delay the recognition of losses connected to the firm’s mortgage-securities exposure. In fact, Merrill proposed a deal with a [...]
November 26, 2007 – 8:00 am
An article in the Arts & Leisure section last Sunday about the No Music Day campaign in Britain included several incorrect references to Muzak, the company that sells prerecorded background music.
Muzak is not distributed in the United Kingdom, and lobbying groups there are not protesting the company; they are against piped music. Many musicians there [...]
November 15, 2007 – 8:00 am
Michele de LaFreniere has not had sexual reassignment surgery. She has two children, one son and one daughter. She was not a Marine, and she owned six bike shops in New York. Additionally, her ex-wife filed for divorce 18 months after de LaFreniere told her she had a strong urge to change genders. Link
Thanks, Susan!
November 5, 2007 – 8:00 am
A television review last Saturday about “Silence of the Bees,” on PBS, misstated the cause of death of a honeybee colony’s males and also included imprecise references to other aspects of hive life. The males, called drones, die after mating or are driven out of the colony by the females and die of exposure; they [...]
February 15, 2007 – 8:00 am
From The Press of Christchurch, New Zealand:
On January 25, 2007, this newspaper published an article referring to prominent QC Gerard McCoy’s involvement in the Fiji Law Reform Commission’s review of the Fiji Penal Code. Regrettably, there was a serious error in the article which gave the wrong impression that Mr McCoy’s involvement in Fiji was [...]
