WBTV (Channel 3) apologized Saturday to the Rev. Billy Graham after the station erroneously reported the evangelist’s death.

Around 6:30 a.m. Saturday, a producer and director in the control room saw what they thought was a bulletin on the CBS network feed to its affiliates announcing Graham’s death, said Dennis Milligan, WBTV’s news director. Kristen Miranda, anchoring the newscast, was told by the show’s producer through her earpiece to announce the news, which she did.

Afterward, WBTV called Mission Hospital in Asheville, where Graham, 93, is recovering from pneumonia, and learned he was not dead.

Within 10 minutes of the original report, WBTV made an on-air correction. Milligan said the station planned to repeat the correction and apology on Saturday’s late newscast and early news today.

He said he was unable to find out Saturday what had been on the CBS network feed, but he said it could have been some kind of test or other content sent during downtime while the network was not providing programming.

Congrats to the station for doing a good job dealing with this mistake. To recap: they issued multiple on air corrections (three by my count), posted an apology on the station’s website, and placed an apology on their Facebook page. That’s a good job of making sure viewers know about the mistake, and the resulting apology.

Here’s the apology on the station’s website:

On Saturday during its early morning newscast, WBTV News mistakenly reported the passing of the Rev. Billy Graham. Our show producer read what he thought was a breaking news crawl about Rev. Graham on an off- air network feed.
He made the decision to air the information without checking it first. That was a mistake.
Within minutes, other staff members contacted the hospital where Rev. Graham is being treated, to find out that he is doing well in his recovery from pneumonia.
We made an on-air correction immediately.
Accuracy is the most important ingredient of any newscast. We at WBTV strive every day to make sure that the news we deliver is accurate, fair and useful to our viewers.
Today we made an unfortunate mistake.
We apologize to Rev. Graham, his family, the staff of Mission Hospital in Asheville where he is being treated and most of all our viewers.
We will be reviewing exactly what happened and we will take steps to make sure that it does not happen again.
– Dennis Milligan, News Director, WBTV

Just to reinforce why it’s good practice to repeat an on air apology, have a look at this comment posted on the station’s Facebook wall:

thank you for the public apologgy tonight at 11:30pm. everyone makes mistakes and I understand you’ll try to be the first for breaking news! it takes a lot of guts to do a formal public apology…. you’ll still are the best! thank you everyone for all you’ll do!

The commenter’s profile says he owns a lawn care company, so he appears unconnected to the station in any professional capacity.

Thanks, Randy!

I wish to refer to the story in last Saturday’s ‘Rolling Back the Years’ supplement recalling the Kerry Babies saga and the Independent Newspapers team coverage of the tribunal at Tralee.
The writer refers to his “now deceased colleagues, Dick Cross and Noel Smith”. Sadly, Noel has left us to enjoy the company of angels but I am happy to reveal Dick Cross is still here and very much alive in our land of financial rogues and suffering saints!
In addition, I can safely say in my 28 years working in the South-West Region for Independent Newspapers, there was never an occasion when my copy needed to be re-typed to make it ‘pristine’. And the same applied to the late, great and legendary Limerick-based Noel Smith.
Dick Cross Cork

A timeline in the main news section Monday incorrectly stated how many siblings Osama bin Laden had. He was one of 54 children of a Saudi construction magnate. Link

Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan on May 1, 2011. The year was incorrect Tuesday in a timeline of bin Laden’s life. Link

Osama bin Laden was killed by American forces May 1, 2011, in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The date was incorrect in a graphic in Tuesday’s paper.

In some of yesterday’s editions, it was incorrectly stated that Osama bin Laden’s wife was killed during the attack on his compound in Pakistan. She was not killed.

Headline erred on quote: In Tuesday’s editions, a headline with a story about congressional reaction to the killing of Osama bin Laden said “Quitman says ‘Evil has met his maker.’” The quote in fact came from U.S. Rep. Rodney Alexander, a Republican who is from Quitman.

Update May 5:

A picture on Tuesday with an article about the response of New Yorkers to the death of Osama bin Laden was published in error. As the caption indicated, it showed a ceremony in Manhattan that included a reading of the names of Holocaust victims; the event was not connected to Bin Laden’s death. Link

I’ve since learned what real, excruciating pain NPR triggered with its false news report that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had died, which was repeated on npr.org, e-mail alerts, Twitter and picked up by other news organizations.

NPR correspondent Ted Robbins is based in Tucson. He was at the scene Jan. 8 when his cell phone rang shortly after NPR aired at 2:01 p.m. EST that Giffords died. The call was a friend, who is also a friend of Giffords.

The friend was sitting outside the hospital operating room with Giffords’ mother Gloria, holding her hand.

“Please tell them to stop reporting she is dead,” he begged Robbins. “She is in surgery.”

Robbins immediately called NPR but was told NPR was sticking to the story since it had two sources.

Scott Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, got a similar call. Simon and his family are close friends of Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly.

At 2:08, a distraught family member called: "Scott, where the hell is NPR getting that information?"

"The close family member is a huge NPR fan or was,” said Simon. “Until that moment, he found NPR more reliable than other news outlets. He had been told that Gabby was in surgery. But he was anxious, isolated, and wondered why NPR would report such a thing if it were not true.”

Simon phoned the NPR news desk and was told the information was based on "confirmation" from the Pima County Sheriff’s department and a congressional source.

He didn’t think that was good enough …

Simon sent these suggested operating principles to top management:

“There should be no room for doubt when a news organization declares someone dead. They should wait until the medical authorities directly involved declare death, or close family members announce it. There is simply no way that anyone else—not local police, not witnesses, not 'two governmental sources'—would be in a position to know for certain especially when there are now, between respiration and brain activity, at least a couple of medical gauges of death.”

– via How NPR Giffords' Mistake Hurt The Families, a blog post from NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard.

Thanks, Adrienne!