Duets: Ann Powers’ Critic’s Notebook in Saturday’s Calendar on the current crop of male/female duets misidentified the name of the Katy Perry hit as “California Gurlz.” It’s called “California Gurls.”Link
In a feature about tattoos we said that “Winston Churchill’s mother, Clementine, had a discreet snake on her wrist”. Clementine was Churchill’s wife. His tattooed mother was Jennie (No pain . . ., 20 July, page 6, G2).Link
A dance review on Friday about “Unrelated Solos,” at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, misidentified the author of the text to which David Neumann’s “Tough the Tough (redux)” is set. The author is Will Eno — not the musician Brian Eno.Link
An article in our series Your next box set (14 May, page 27, G2) recommended It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, whose “scripts wander into areas where other sitcoms fear to tread”. But the headline read: It’s Always Sunny in California. Link
*Correction May 25, 2010: This headline originally and incorrectly read “All U.S. places cities are alike.” As noted by a commenter, California is not a city. And as subsequently noted by the same commenter, I confused the original and corrected heds in my initial correction. Brilliant work on all accounts.
In early editions of the paper, an article accidentally referred to the senator involved in US anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s as Eugene McCarthy; as later editions said, the McCarthy in question was Joseph (Slave trade renamed as schools in Texas seek to drop ‘liberal bias’, 17 May, page 15). Link
Hundreds of copies of a free weekly newspaper had to be recalled last Friday after a mis-spelled picture caption left staff red-faced.
Last week’s Ludlow Journal featured a front-page picture story about a belltower captain called Tony Fuller who had organised a training event for young would-be bellringers.
Unfortunately the picture caption rendered the name “Tony Fuller” as “Tiny Fukker.”
It is understood that staff at the paper, which is part of Shropshire Newspapers, were alerted to the error on Friday by Mr Fuller himself…
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall for that discussion. The offending caption:
In some editions, an April 26 Style article about an Earth Day concert on the Mall misidentified the “Avatar” characters that some attendees wore costumes to resemble. The blue creatures are called N’avi, not Avi. Link
Tony Brendon Jones, 36, was the man sentenced in the Invercargill District Court on Wednesday for assaulting a female in October, not Tony John Jones, as we reported yesterday. Tony John Jones is facing a similar though unrelated charge and his case is yet to be heard. The error is regretted.
The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong apologized on its front page for the incorrect use of Chinese characters for the name of Chinese President Hu Jintao.
“The South China Morning Post sincerely apologizes for the Chinese name translation error for President Hu Jintao in yesterday’s newspaper,” the entire correction said.
Instead of the Chinese characters for Hu’s name, the English-language Post printed the characters for “Hu Jia,” which is the same name of a prominent mainland activist serving a three-and-a-half year jail term for subversion, Radio Television Hong Kong said on its Web site …
Thanks, Steve and Bonny!
Correction April 20, 2010: This post originally and incorrectly called Bloomberg “Blomberg.” It has been corrected. Thanks, Daniel!
A headline on a capsule summary in some editions on Monday about China’s new ambassador to North Korea misidentified the location of a weekend party welcoming him to the country. It was in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang — not, of course, in the South Korean capital of Seoul. (The article, which noted the correct location, was written from Seoul.)Link
A television entry in the Week Ahead report last Sunday about “Ugly Americans” on Comedy Central misstated the name of a similar television show. It is “The Life and Times of Tim,” not “The Life and Death of Tim.”Link
According to an interview piece (The day we clicked, 20 February, page 14, Weekend), the late Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd once recorded a solo album called The Mad Cat Laughs. That would be The Madcap Laughs.Link
Yesterday, in a post about Sarah Silverman‘s “retarded” performance at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference, this humbled Fishie wrongly thought TED organizer Chris Anderson the same person as Wired editor Chris Anderson. That post has been significantly amended to get things straight. We regret the error.
But, seriously, two guys named Chris Anderson? When the folks at Wired wrote us to mention the mistake, they informed us it happens all the time. Both are involved in journalism and both affiliated with TED: one Anderson is a TED organizer and the other works for Wired, which sponsors TED.
SAG won’t let two actors work under the same name. Can we get a middle initial in there or something? Everyone knows the Internet killed off fact-checkers years ago. How about a little help?
The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile was misspelled Monday in The Week Ahead column on the front of the Local section. The rolling hot dog will be in South Florida on Thursday, noon at UM and 3 p.m. at FIU, looking for drivers.Link
Meredith Vieira was asked who she thought would light the Olympic flame at the opening ceremonies in Vancouver, and she gave a very strange answer. Vieira confused Canadian actor Michael J. Fox with Canadian cancer activist and athlete Terry Fox, who died in 1981. They even managed to use photos of both men:
In the Crime Q&A about the kidnapping and murder of Connie Lee Decker on Page B2 Sunday, the last two paragraphs incorrectly used the victim’s name instead of the name of the man, David Breaux, who was convicted of killing her. The paragraphs should have said that Breaux had two prior convictions, robbery in 1978 and battery on a police officer in 1975, and that Breaux, in addition to being sentenced to death for Decker’s murder, was also sentenced to life in prison plus 10 years.
Because of an editing error, an article on Saturday about J. D. Salinger’s last known address in New York City, 300 East 57th Street, misspelled the surname of his best-known literary character. He is Holden Caulfield, not Caufield.Link
Mr Mullins: On page 6 yesterday a report mentioned that Patrick Joseph Mullins, 42, of East Fremantle, had been charged with attempted aggravated sexual penetration, wilful damage and aggravated burglary. We would like to make clear that the charged man is not Patrick Joseph Mullins, a former prominent resident of Fremantle, who once ran as an Australian Democrat candidate and now lives in the Goldfields, where he runs an art gallery.
A Jan. 19 image accompanying an article about Jason Kieffer’s new comic book, The Rabble of Downtown Toronto, incorrectly identified the cartoon as “Crazy Hand Lady.”
In fact, the drawing was “Rage Man.” Link
DUE to the Kalgoorlie Miner’s strange obsession with the word “Jackson”, an error appeared in yesterday’s paper.
The new Kalgoorlie Centrelink Customer Service Centre manager’s name is Pauline Tucker.
Ms Tucker (not Jackson) has travelled all the way from Esperance to Kalgoorlie-Boulder and we regret botching her media introduction to the community – first impressions are important.
We wish Ms Tucker all the best, hope she is settling in well and is crossing her fingers that she finds her iron (it was reportedly lost in the move).
The print version of this article incorrectly placed this event’s date as the third Tuesday of every month. It’s actually the second Thursday of every month. We regret the error.
We also, in the print version, we printed Greg Goode’s name as Greg Oreo. This is another unfortunate mistake. Link
THE caption that accompanied the article Call on the Brains Trust (TRN, December 17) incorrectly identified Clyde Mitchell as the president and Derek Vickers as the secretary for the Book-A-Brain initiative.
Mr Mitchell is in fact the president for the North Arm Shotgun Association, and Mr Vickers the secretary of the same.
Photo courtesy of David Brzeski.
The Range News apologises for any confusion.
Brazil soccer: A soccer column in Sunday’s Sports section looking irreverently ahead to 2010 included the following passage: “Brasilia — Lulu, the president of Brazil and no relation to the 1960s English pop singer, has decreed that the country can field only players with names consisting of four or fewer letters.” The president of Brazil is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and the pop singer Lulu is Scottish, not English. Link
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How To Prevent Factual Errors
I offered some basic advice for preventing factual errors in this post. You should also download the free Regret the Error accuracy checklist here. Then read my Columbia Journalism Review column that explains why checklists are so effective.
Finally, if you have any tips or tricks for helping to prevent errors, please share them with me, so I can share them with others.
Note: The formatting of older posts can be a bit wonky due to the switch to WordPress. Also, the images in older posts are not automatically loading. Just click on the link to see the image.