The offending story is online and doesn’t include this “clarification.” It also doesn’t include any credit or attribution to the Gulf News. The Gulf news story is here.

Here’s a quote from the Gulf News story:

“The claws on it were unreal,” said Mr. Parsons. “The quills had white colouring through them. There was no mistaking the quills,” he said.

The Post:

“There was no mistaking the quills,” Mr. Parsons says. “The claws on it were unreal.”

From there the Post and Gulf both quote Shelley Moores, a senior wildlife manager with Newfoundland and Labrador’s Department of Environment and Conservation. But the quotes appear to be different, and to be fair the Post story also added other sources to its piece.

Still, why bother issuing a clarification if you don’t add it to the online version as well?

Thanks, Doug!

Thanks, Morgan!

The court elimination of Phizer’s Norvasc patent saved Ratiopharm about $170-million a year. Due to an editing error, the wrong figure appeared in The Price Is Wrong by Aidan Hollis in the Financial Post on Tuesday.

Thanks, Morgan!

A brief in World Report yesterday incorrectly depicted U.S. envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell with a photograph of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel. The Post regrets the error.

Does that mean they confused the two men? Or that the photo somehow depicted Mitchell in a strange way?

First off, here are a couple of the mistaken stories, as presented in a good post by Montreal blogger Steve Faguy (click for larger):

In terms of laying blame, Mathew Ingram of GigaOm and Peter Kafka at AllThingsD argue that people should stop blaming Twitter because good old traditional media played a big role in this. Here’s Ingram’s take:

… Once it became known that Lightfoot had not in fact gone to his eternal reward, plenty of people spent the next several hours doing another thing that people love to do on Twitter: blame Twitter for spreading a fake news report. But as Peter Kafka correctly points out, Twitter didn’t kill Gordon Lightfoot — traditional media did. It appeared to start with a prank phone call (remember the telephone?) to the management company representing Lightfoot’s close friend and fellow musical legend Ronnie Hawkins, from someone pretending to be Lightfoot’s grandson.

Hawkins then started calling people to let them know, who in turn alerted Canwest News Service, which called Hawkins to confirm the news and then published a brief news item that got picked up by a number of the chain’s newspapers. That report was then spread by reporters on Twitter, including Canwest political reporter David Akin, who later wrote a blog post about the role he played in the story.

As Akin notes in his analysis of what happened, traditional news wires regularly report things that turn out to be wrong, including the deaths of famous people. Back in the PT days (pre-Twitter), only traditional journalists saw those reports, and while they occasionally made their way into print or onto a TV news show, for the most part newswires like the Associated Press and Reuters corrected them before they escaped into the real world …

Not that I want to pile on against evil big media but in fact there are many examples wherein AP or Reuters were the ones who falsely reported a death. One famous example came years ago when AP shunted Bob Hope into an early grave. In fact, death by media is so common that I dedicated a chapter to it in my book and also came up with a specific term to describe it: obiticide. You can read an excerpt from that chapter here. And go here to have a look at the many obiticides collected on this site. Update: Oh, and I forget to add a link to a CJR column I wrote about obiticide, which includes this quick list of death by media victims from 2008:

Just this past year, newspapers have killed off Frank McCourt, Billy Graham (twice!), Muhammad Ali, Pat Robertson and Victor Willis of Village People fame. (Okay, it’s a bit of a stretch to include the last one.)

A lot of not-so-famous people were also victims. Heck, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution even killed a funeral director …

So the next time you hear somebody talk about the Internet killing off celebrities, be sure to remind them that newspapers, wire services, magazines, and radio and TV have been doing it for a whole lot longer. And they’re still the champs.

A story that ran in the National Post yesterday incorrectly suggested that Ehud Telem was a broker in an alleged Ponzi scheme. Mr. Telem was not named or alleged to be a broker in the final report issued by the court-appointed receiver. The Post regrets the error.

No apology?

In last Saturday’s Post Homes, the cover story about Peter Freedand the Fashion House development incorrectly said his father hadp assed away. Mr. Freed Sr. is very much still with us. We apologize for the error.

Yes, there’s a typo in the correction.

Today, a Financial Post reporter responded unprofessionally to another Twitter user on his personal Twitter account.
While the remarks were made on the reporter’s personal Twitter account, the conversation first began when the reporter was acting in his capacity as a reporter for the Financial Post.
We hold — and will continue to hold — all our reporters to a higher standard in how they address anyone, in any forum.
We apologize for the reporter’s conduct. Link

The exchange in question is detailed here. It’s rare, but not unprecedented, to see a paper apologize for a reporter’s personal conduct. It’s also rare to see an incident and apology on the same day but, hey, that’s the power of the Internet.

A story on residential schools payments that appeared in yesterday’s National Post, and was provided by the Canwest News Service, incorrectly attributed quotes to Brenda Reynolds. All of the quotes attributed to Ms. Reynolds, regarding deaths in British Columbia and recipients’ reactions to the payments, were made by Sharon Thira of the Indian Residential Schools Survival Society. Ms. Reynolds, a psychologist who works with former residential school students, did not make any comments for this story. Canwest News Service regrets the error.

Thanks, Morgan!

A story yesterday on the Toronto Maple Leafs roster this season incorrectly credited Moses — rather than God– with writing the 10 commandments. Link to both