We took a brief late summer vacation last week, but the corrections and accuracy news kept coming. So, enjoy some items of note from last week. And also read our other posts below for some notable corrections from last week.
Manipulated War Photos?
This big ongoing story relates to accusations against news organizations for running doctored war photos from the middle east. All this started when Reuters contributing photographer Adnan Hajj was found to have altered photos taken of the war in Lebanon. Reuters subsequently dismissed him and removed his photos from its databases. Accusations against other photographers have now started to fly. A round-up here and more here.
Wired News Removes Three Stories After Discovering Freelancer Fabricated Sources
The online news source has, for the second time in a little more than a year, had to investigate the work of a freelance contributor. Last year’s investigation resulted in Wired placing editor’s notes in 24 of freelancer Michelle Delio’s articles. Then on August 9 it announced a similar investigation had turned up problems with another writer:
Wired News has removed three articles from its website after an internal investigation failed to confirm the authenticity of a source
used in the stories. “Tribal Curse Haunts Launch Pad” (June 27, 2006), “NASA Boosts Heart-Monitoring Tech” (July 7, 2006) and “Don’t Flush It — Breathe It” (July 14, 2006), all by Philip Chien, relied in part on quotes and citations from Robert Ash, described in the first two stories as a “space historian” and in the last as an “aeronautical engineer and amateur space historian.”
In a phone conversation with Wired News editors, Chien had identified Ash as a professor of aeronautical engineering at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Reached by phone this week, Ash said he is not a space historian and has never participated in interviews with Chien. Ash is an aeronautical engineering professor at the university and has been involved in numerous NASA projects.
Chien is a freelance space reporter who has worked for online, print and television news outlets, and recently authored a book on the Columbia space shuttle disaster. He’s written seven stories for Wired News, two of them in 2004, the other five in the past few weeks…
The article explains more about how Wired discovered problems with Chien’s work. But of interest here is that Wired News instituted a new policy requiring all writers to submit contact information for each source in a story. It appears that the publication then conducts random checks with these sources, or follows up when they suspect something isn’t kosher.
Chicago Tribune Condemns The Wrong Eddie Johnson
The paper that last year managed to misidentify two Chicago men as mobsters two days in a row made another egregious mistaken ID last week. A former NBA player named Eddie Johnson was charged with sexual assault. But there are two Eddie Johnsons who played in the NBA, and the Tribune, rushing to get the news item in the paper before deadline, chose the wrong one. The mistaken Johnson told AP that it was the worst day of his life. “Devastating. Hard to explain,” he told the news service.
The day after its error, the Tribune ran an editor’s note and a correction. The editor’s note/apology:
Haste to make deadline is no excuse for putting incorrect information in a newspaper. Factual errors erode a paper’s credibility.
We made an inadvertent but hurtful error Tuesday night in an effort to get as much news as possible into Wednesday’s final edition of the Tribune sports section, and we would like to apologize to Eddie Johnson, his family and friends, and our readers.
An Associated Press story detailing the arrest of “former NBA All-Star Eddie Johnson” moved across the wire late Tuesday, and a decision was made to get it into the “Press Box” segment of the sports section, where our sports briefs go.
In Chicago, former NBA star Eddie Johnson means Eddie Johnson, 47, a 6-foot-7-inch forward from Westinghouse High School and the University of Illinois, the Eddie Johnson who went on to a 17-year pro career with seven NBA teams. The Eddie Johnson who was distinguished as much by good citizenship and charity work as by 19,202 career points, a 16-point scoring average and the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Award he won with the Phoenix Suns in 1988-89.
Unfortunately, the man arrested Tuesday was “the other” Eddie Johnson, 51, a 6-2 guard from Auburn who had a 10-year career with three NBA teams and has been in and out of trouble with the law since he quit playing in 1987.
In the last paragraph of the wire story, “the other” Eddie Johnson was identified correctly as a former Atlanta Hawks
All-Star who played college ball at Auburn. But in our haste to make deadline, we failed to make the distinction.
The Ocala, Fla., dateline should have been one tipoff. Chicago’s Eddie Johnson lives in Phoenix and works as a television analyst for the Suns. The charges–sexual battery on a child younger than 12 and residential burglary–should have been not a tipoff but a red flag. Anyone who knows or has had even limited contact with Chicago’s Eddie Johnson would find it unfathomable that he would be linked to such behavior.
“It has happened before” in other media, Johnson said Wednesday from his home in Phoenix. “The other guy keeps getting in trouble, and since I’m the more visible of the two, it keeps coming back to me.”
For the record, Chicago’s Eddie Johnson remains extensively involved in charity work, including motivational speaking and basketball clinics for kids. In addition to his broadcasting duties, he is president of a Phoenix telecommunications firm. He got his degree from Illinois in 1981, and he was and is regarded as one of the NBA’s model citizens.
Again, we apologize.
“It has been a tough day,” Johnson said, “but I appreciate you trying to set the record straight.”
And it looks like the South Florida Sun-Sentinel made the same error:
An item in the Briefing on Page 2C of Thursday’s Sports section did not make clear the identity of a former NBA player who has been charged with sexual assault, according to police in Ocala. The former NBA player charged, Eddie Johnson, played in the NBA from 1977-87 with the Atlanta Hawks, Cleveland Cavaliers and Seattle SuperSonics. He is not to be confused with the Eddie Johnson who is now a television analyst with one of his former teams, the Phoenix Suns. Link
An amusing correction from the New York Post’s Page Six:
August 10, 2006 – LARRY David and his wife, Laurie, must have pretty convincing doubles. The testy comic says yesterday’s
report from our spy that David went ballistic when his BMW was hit by a shopping cart on Martha’s Vineyard is “so fantastical, I’m considering hiring your source for my show . . . none of it is true.” Worse, the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star says, “the most egregious error was that they had me wearing shorts, an item of clothing that hasn’t been on my body since I started growing hair.” Link
THE source who told us last week about Michelle Obama getting lobster and caviar delivered to her room at the Waldorf-Astoria must have been under the influence of a mind-altering drug. She was not even staying at the Waldorf. We regret the mistake, and our former source is going to regret it, too. Bread and water would be too good for such disinformation. Link
In a ruling cited in the July 18 New York Post, state Supreme Court Judge Emily Jane Goodman was referring to the alleged “outrageous and disgraceful” conduct of Speaker Sheldon Silver.
ON April 23 we reported that the fiancée of Gregg “Opie” Hughes, one half of the Opie and Anthony radio show, was involved in an X-rated sex video with MTV star Bam Margera. We reported that Hughes was taking legal action against a disgruntled ex-employee of the radio duo who had acquired the rights to the video. We have since learned that this information, supplied by Steppin’ Out’s Chaunce Hayden, was entirely incorrect. There is no sex tape. Further, Hughes’ fiancée has never met the MTV star. The Post sincerely regrets the error. 
A story headlined “Unsafe Hands” and a photo caption in yesterday’s Post wrongly reported that Darrie Eason, of Long Beach, LI, died last May following a double mastectomy at Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre, LI.
A Washington Post correction demonstrates one fallibility when interviewing people on the street — journalists never ask them for ID to prove they are who they say they are. (Not that we’re suggesting they do; It’s just hard to protect against folks who willingly mislead the media.)
And The New York Post’s “blow me” quote from a May 1, 2001 story:
