In “Two mullahs went into a bar…” (November 26th) we cited Omid Djalili as a British Muslim comedian. He jokes about, among others, Muslims but is himself a Bahai. Sorry. Link *Correction December 2, 2011: The orignal version of this post’s headline mistakenly used the word “be” instead of “but”. (“Not a Muslim, be he [...]
I came across two notable articles that both offer guidance on how journalists should handle (and debunk) misinformation provided by sources. Both cited a recent ad from the Mitt Romney campaign that included a falsehood. So, as the story from Nieman Watchdog Project asks, “When candidates lie, what’s a political reporter to do?” From Dan [...]
A retraction from AP: The Associated Press has withdrawn the 12th and 13th Ld-Writethrus of its story about the Natalie Wood investigation. The story quoted Christopher Walken telling Washington, D.C. sports talk radio station ESPN980 about his recollections from the night that Wood died. The station now says that it was a hoax involving a [...]
A story in Saturday’s Real Deal section suggested that a fun thing to do for Halloween is to write “poison” on a plastic jar or bottle and fill it with candy for the kids to eat. A picture that accompanied the story showed a skull and crossbones image similar to the symbol used to indicate [...]
At some point every newly appointed ombudsman/public editor will address the issue of errors and corrections. Often they come back to it again and again. The former ombudsman at the Washington Post, Andrew Alexander, is a good example. (See here, here, here). His successor, Patrick B. Pexton, has now weighed in with a blog post [...]
A photo on Page E4 on Sunday was misidentified. The photo identified as 9/11 victim Paul Beatini was actually Scott McGovern, also a victim of the attack. *Correction Sept. 8, 2011: The original headline on this post referred to “9/1″ instead of “9/11.” I regret the error. Report an error
A notice from the AP: The mayor of Vilnius acknowledged Tuesday distributing a deliberately altered picture to The Associated Press and other news organizations intended to dramatize his anti-parking campaign, an image that then was published in newspapers around world. The AP withdrew the photo, transmitted on Aug. 3, and notified its customers of the [...]
I was a guest on last week’s edition of the WNYC program On The Media to discuss the Wall Street Journal’s scrubbing of its editorial about the attacks in Norway. Here’s their intro for the segment: In the wake of the Oslo attacks, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial blaming the violence on Islamic [...]
Karen Rothmyer, public editor of the Star of Nairobi, Kenya, dedicated a recent column to the issue of corrections. Specifically, the issue is that her paper seems to prefer to not publish them. It sometimes publishes a corrective article when a mistake is made, or it will occasionally go into online articles and scrub away [...]
While the world is focused on the actions of the now-defunct News of the World (and possibly other British tabloids), on Friday eight British newspapers issued apologies for outrageous, prominent and defamatory front pages and articles that falsely painted Christopher Jefferies as a murderer. The Tabloid Watch blog has an excellent overview of the issue [...]
On July 3, 2011, an item in the Naked Eye column referred to a play called The Table of Knowledge based on the ICAC investigation into Wollongong City Council. The item incorrectly stated that Michael Kollaras had a sexual relationship with town planner Beth Morgan. The Sun-Herald now acknowledges that any such allegation against Michael [...]
St. John housing official’s salary corrected: A story in some Tuesday editions about the termination of Richard “Dale” Wolfe as St. John the Baptist Parish housing authority executive director incorrectly reported his salary. Wolfe was paid $75,000 a year, not $75,000 a month. *Correction May 12: The headline of this post originally read “Fuzy numbers [...]
Several places, including Gawker and the Atlantic Wire, took note of the fact that Fox News’ website removed a bizarre and borderline disturbing article that seemed to link an Obama speech with a young man’s suicide.* From the Atlantic Wire: Fox News has scrubbed its website of an article suggestively commenting on the coincidental suicide [...]
From NewsFirst5.com: Imagine waking up and checking the Sunday paper to find that you've won the lottery, but then learning that the newspaper printed the wrong numbers. That's just what happened to a Pueblo couple this weekend. Jim and Dorothy Sprague say they experienced a lot of joy and a lot of heartbreak all in [...]
Correction March 25: It turns out this is a Photoshopped cover. The magazine posted the below note on its website. I was one of many who were fooled, not that it excuses me in any way: They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, and we do love a Tails cover gone viral. [...]
Versions of an article that appeared online and in print, examining Germany's social, cultural and economic background, contained various errors. Germany is not Europe's largest country – France is bigger – and in terms of exports it is not third to China and the US in the world; it now ranks second only to China. [...]
An essay on Page 11 this weekend, about how the media reports on itself, refers incorrectly to a reporter who live-blogged a radio show on which the writer, Bill Keller, appeared. The reporter, Zeke Turner, is a man. Link *Correction March 14, 2011: This headline originally and incorrectly referred to the "NT Times Magazine" instead [...]
This site was inaccessible for much of last week due to it being temporarily listed as an attack site by Google. As a result, I missed blogging about a few notable items: A Bad Byline From a report on WQAD.com: The Western Courier is an award-winning newspaper at Western Illinois University that takes pride in [...]
Word started to spread last week that quarterback Brett Favre might be joining the next edition of Dancing With the Stars. There were speculative articles by USA Today and ProFootballTalk, among others. But none of these articles included a quote from Favre, and no one from the show was on record as giving any credence [...]
Want to correct a mistake made by the Onion News Network? Be prepared for them to invade your life: 'FactZone' Viewer Has Sad, Pathetic Life Thanks, Daniel! *Correction January 30: The headline of this post originally and incorrectly used the word "views" instead of viewers. Thanks, Steve! Report an error
Ken Auletta's latest article in the New Yorker — a long feature about the new AOL — set off a lot of online chatter. One statistic in particular was highlighted by the Consumerist and Business Insider. The former writes: A New Yorker profile this week details how 80% of AOL's revenue comes from subscriptions, and, [...]
A freelance writer and journalism graduate of Columbia University was caught fabricating sources in a recent piece for the Village Voice.* Here's a note from the paper's editor: Freelance writer Rob Sgobbo's article "For-Profit Blues" was removed from the website after the Voice learned that Sgobbo had invented a character, "Tamicka Bourges," who claimed she [...]
On September 5, 2010, a column by Ezra Levant contained false statements about George Soros and his conduct as a young teenager in Nazi-occupied Hungary. Upon receiving a letter of complaint from Mr. Soros’s legal counsel on September 13, 2010, Sun Media Corporation always intended to publish a retraction and apology for this column. Despite [...]
A picture of Pearl Te Amo, sent to prison for drink- driving causing death and for failing to stop after the accident, was incorrectly captioned yesterday as Michelle Grace (pictured), who was the victim of the fatal crash. We apologise to the extended Grace family for the distress this mistake caused. *Correction July 24: The [...]
An article in our series Your next box set (14 May, page 27, G2) recommended It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, whose “scripts wander into areas where other sitcoms fear to tread”. But the headline read: It’s Always Sunny in California. Link *Correction May 25, 2010: This headline originally and incorrectly read “All U.S. places cities [...]
