I apologize for calling gubernatorial candidate Kristin Davis a hooker in a column published in this paper on Tuesday. I offer this apology for calling Kristin Davis a hooker, after receiving an e-mailed press release declaring her intention to sue me for calling her a hooker.

She is not, the press release explains, a hooker. Nor has she ever been a hooker — or at least, according to the press release, "there is no evidence whatsoever" that Davis was a hooker.

In the press release, her lawyer says, "Mr. Podhoretz cannot make irresponsible statements like calling my client a hooker."

I am sorry if I made an irresponsible statement calling Kristin Davis a hooker. I had wrongly assumed that the hooker business was like any other business in which ambitious go-getters with spunk rose through its ranks from rough-and-tumble frontline work to the more genteel managerial responsibilities that go with the hotly desired executive title of "madam."

Since I am willing to acknowledge I don't know enough about what goes into making someone a hooker, I was wrong to call Kristin Davis a hooker.

I was wrong to assume that, just because she (in the words of her own press release) "spent four months on Rikers Island after pleading to one count of promoting prostitution," Kristin Davis herself could be described as a hooker. No, and no again — Kristin Davis was an employer of hookers, a contractor of hookers …

And on it goes…

“One time, there was somebody giving what I call the gift-wrapped scoop to one of my friendly rivals at a broadsheet paper. and I said, ‘Look, I was on that story and you gave it to them. Here’s what i’m going to do. Every story from now on, every cockamamie rumor that comes out of your company is going in my paper. I’ll call you at the end of the day and say you deny the report…and then you deal with the consequences.”

Kelly explained: “There’s one thing that I get paid for at the Post is scoops, if you’re gonna give scoops to someone else, you’re taking food off my kids’ (dinner) table. I resent it from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes.”

– Via "Keith Kelly: scourge of media industry" from MarketWatch. Maybe I'm no fun, but I don't think a journalist should print a "cockamamie rumor" just because he got burned by a source. And he sure as hell shouldn't be bragging about it. WTF?

Update July 29, 8:20 am: The Village Voice has some interesting background on this correction. From a post published last night:

A tipster tells us that Rupert Murdoch was so enthralled with the story when it ran, that he called Post editor-in-chief Col Allan to personally congratulate him on it. Logic would follow, then, that Murdoch called Col Allan to personally deliver his rage and desire to see an axe drop at some point today, sending everyone involved with the story into crisis mode, we heard …

The Dec. 23, 2009, issue of The Post contained an article about Michael Jackson. In connection with the article, The Post printed the wrong picture of an individual named Terry George. The Terry George in the photo is a film and TV writer and director, whose credits include “Hotel Rwanda,” not the Terry George referred to in the article. The Post regrets the error.

Here’s the article.

As the New York Observer noted, this erroneous report was picked up by others:

Rush Limbaugh’s Web site has a transcript of the radio host reading the Page Six item and saying, “Now, the first thing about this is, if I’m the Obamas, I’m thinking, ‘Who the hell called the newspaper on this?’ These hotels are not supposed to say a word about what goes on in there. Trust me, they do.” Mr. Limbaugh also termed the Obamas non-existent meal order “hypocrisy.” (Weirdly—appropriately?—Mr. Limbaugh’s transcription service renders the hotel’s name ‘Waldorf-Hysteria.’)

Town Hall’s Carol Platt Liebau wrote, “Look, I don’t begrudge the Obamas their caviar and lobster. I like lobster, too (caviar? not so much). It’s just that the whole mentality strikes me as typical of Democrat thinking.”

It wasn’t just professional talking pointers jumping on the story. This “P.U.M.A.” Web site (remember “P.U.M.A.“? Good times…) mocked up a fake receipt signed by Ms. Obama. A different site ran with the headline The Audacity of Michelle Obama’s $447.39 Snack Tab. Here’s another which noted “Obama is swimming in the $$$$” and then quipped, “What does one do with all that cash?”

Thanks to George and the others folks for the link.

Thanks, Brian!

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

This reminds us of one priceless example from a New York Post story back in May 2001. One source in an article about financial services companies opening up cafes gave his name as “Heywood Jablome.” Just say it out loud…and read the excerpt below.

The Washington Post correction:

A Nov. 27 Metro article about day laborers gathered outside a Woodbridge convenience store misidentified an employee of the nearby Merchant’s Tire and Auto Center. The employee told a Washington Post reporter his name was Jeff Owens. But store manager Jeff Owen never spoke to a reporter.

And The New York Post’s “blow me” quote from a May 1, 2001 story:

“If I didn’t work a block away, I wouldn’t go in. People who want to trade can do it from their laptop or hand-held device.”
Heywood Jablome, 41, a Manhattan real estate agent, agreed.
“This is a nice-looking store, but I don’t see people coming in here to trade,” he said. “Not the suits’ who work up here. No way!”