An article about the effect of the Wall Street crisis on Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs cited two sources who were said to have been briefed on a conversation in which John J. Mack, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, had told Vikram S. Pandit, Citigroup’s chief executive, that “we need a merger partner or we’re not going to make it.”
On Thursday, Morgan Stanley vigorously denied that Mr. Mack had made the comment, as did Citigroup, which had declined to comment on Wednesday. The Times’s two sources have since clarified their comments, saying that because they were not present during the discussions, they could not confirm that Mr. Mack had in fact made the statement. The Times should have asked Morgan Stanley for comment and should not have used the quotation without doing more to verify the sources’ version of events. Link
Thanks, Paul!
A film review on Sept. 5 about “Save Me” confused some characters and actors. It is Mark, not Chad, who is sent to the Genesis House retreat for converting gay men to heterosexuality. (Mark is played by Chad Allen; there is no character named Chad). The hunky fellow resident is Scott (played by Robert Gant), not Ted (Stephen Lang). And it is Mark and Scott — not “Chad and Ted” — who partake of cigarettes and “furtive man-on-man action.” 
An article on Saturday about a Chinese government investigation into the sale of powdered baby formula contaminated with melamine, an industrial compound, misstated the number of animal deaths in the United States last year that were attributed to pet food contaminated with melamine from China. It was at least 16, not thousands. (The number of animals that became sick totaled in the thousands.) 
An article on Monday about plans for the Smithsonian Institution outlined by G. Wayne Clough, its new chief executive, misstated the goal of the institution’s capital campaign. It is to raise more than $1 billion over five to seven years, not $5 million to $7 million. 
An obituary on Aug. 11 about the playwright and actor George Furth referred incorrectly to the character he played in the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” The character, Woodcock, a railway employee, is blown up by Butch Cassidy in one train robbery, but in a second robbery he is tricked into opening the rail car; he does not allow himself to be blown up twice. 
An article on Wednesday about the rough debut for Charlie Zink, a rookie knuckleball pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, misspelled the surname of a knuckleballer from the 1930s and ’40s, when such pitchers were not as rare. He was Johnny Niggeling, not Niggling. (The error also appeared in an article in March 1984 about a catcher who played with Niggeling. That mistake was discovered during research for this correction.) 
A listing of credits on April 28, 1960, with a theater review of “West Side Story” on its return to the Winter Garden theater, misstated the surname of the actor who played Action. He is George Liker, not Johnson. (Mr. Liker, who hopes to audition for a role in a Broadway revival of the show planned for February, brought the error to The Times’s attention last month.) 
An article on Sunday about Senator John McCain’s campaign management style described his role as a Navy pilot in Vietnam incorrectly. He flew bombing missions as an attack aircraft pilot, but he was not a “fighter pilot.” (The error has appeared in numerous other Times articles the past dozen years, most recently on April 9 and on Dec. 15, 2007.) 
A chart last Monday with an article about the Senate race in New Hampshire referred incorrectly, in some editions, to the incumbent Republican who Democrats hope can be defeated by Jeanne Shaheen. As an accompanying picture showed, the New Hampshire senator, John E. Sununu, is a man. 
A picture on Tuesday with an article about a deadly climbing accident on Pakistan’s K2 summit was published in error. The photograph, supplied by the European Pressphoto Agency, showed Gasherbrum IV, another formidable summit in Pakistan — not K2. 
An article on June 29 about Hunter S. Thompson described incorrectly the context for a quotation by his widow, Anita Thompson, in which she said he was “surrounded by leeches and hanger-on-ers.” She was referring to the early 70s, around the time that Mr. Thompson covered the Ali-Frazier fight in Zaire; she did not mean at the time of his death. 
In her column last Wednesday, Maureen Dowd wrote that a Democratic lawmaker privately asked Gen. David Petraeus why there weren’t more Democrats in the military, and he replied, “There are more than you think.” Col. Steven Boylan of the general’s public affairs office in Baghdad, which was not contacted for comment, says the quotation “is in error as he never made nor would make such a statement.” 
An article on Thursday that previewed an article in The New York Times Magazine on Sunday about Afghanistan’s thriving opium trade misstated the background of Thomas Schweich, who wrote the magazine article. He is a former senior counternarcotics official in the State Department who was based in Washington and made several visits to Afghanistan. He was not based in Kabul. 
In an early version of the Today’s Headlines e-mail for Sunday, a photograph of Johnny Carson was incorrectly paired with an Op-Ed article about Radovan Karadzic. 
Because of a production error, some copies of Wednesday’s paper contain an outdated crossword puzzle and its solution. If you look here first, proceed with caution. If the answer in the solution to one across also appears in the puzzle above it, you have a paper with the wrong crossword. If the solution to one across matches Tuesday’s puzzle, you’re in the clear, and on your own. 
An article on Friday about earnings at JPMorgan Chase misstated the bank’s income from investment banking in its second quarter. The division reported a net income of $394 million, not a loss of $785 million. 
An article on Wednesday about the political anchor Brit Hume and his future at the Fox News Channel paraphrased incorrectly a comment by a Fox spokeswoman. She said she would 
An article last Thursday about designer sunglasses misstated the given name and misspelled the surname of an executive with a sunglass retailer. He is Rick Talmage, not Richard Talmadge. It also misidentified the company for which he is the chief operating officer. It is the Solstice Sunglass Boutique chain — not Safilo, which is Solstice’s parent company.
An article last Monday about the United States Olympic swimming trials, including the accomplishments of Dara Torres at age 41, misstated the age of a Canadian swimmer from the 1972 Games. Brenda Holmes was 14, not 44, when she competed for Canada. 
An article on June 27 about the stabbing death of a teenage girl after an altercation aboard a New York City bus, and the arrest of a Queens man, included an erroneous location from the police for the bus stop where the suspect, Winston Alladin, boarded. He got on at Parsons Boulevard and Archer Avenue — not Archer and Jamaica Avenues, which run parallel. The article also misidentified the location of the school where the victim, Keyanna Jones, had just finished her freshman year, and misidentified the campus she attended. John Adams High School is in Ozone Park, not Far Rockaway, and she took classes at the annex in South Ozone Park, not at the main campus.
Because of an editing error, an article on Thursday about negotiations over a security agreement between Iraq and the United States, under which private security contractors would no longer be immune from Iraqi law, gave an outdated name for a private security contractor with a reputation in Iraq for excessive force. It is Blackwater Worldwide, not Blackwater USA. (The error also appeared in an article last 
An article on Wednesday about the delivery of Barry Bonds’s 756th home run ball to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum misstated the number of votes cast in an online contest held by Marc Ecko, the fashion designer who purchased the ball and asked people to vote on what to do with it. About 10 million votes — not “10,000 million” — were recorded. 
