I’ve been working on my annual roundup of The Year in Media Errors and Corrections and have a bunch of candidates in mind. We’ll share the current finalists during the chat, and I hope folks will share others I may have overlooked.

Come have your say, and chat about some of the best of the worst. I’ll even share a few choice corrections!

Please email me if I’ve missed any incidents.

January

None!

February

The Merced Sun-Star published a letter to the editor that had been plagiarized from a blog. Link

Daily Beast writer and author Gerald Posner was exposed as a serial plagiarist. His writing for the Beast was the first to come under scrutiny, and soon his books were also exposed. Link

New York Times business reporter Zachery Kouwe resigned after he “reused language from The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and other sources without attribution or acknowledgment.” Link

March

None!

April

Italian journalist Tommaso Debenedetti was exposed as a serial fabricator. Link

New York Times Times art critic Benjamin Genocchio was caught lifting from Wikipedia. Link

May

A reporter with the French-language broadcaster (and online publisher) TVA was caught stealing from Rue Frontenac, a French-language publication in Quebec. Link

June

None!

July

Two columns by Scotsman executive editor Bill Jamieson that appeared in the Wall Street Journal Europe were later found to have contained material copied from other sources. Link

August

Leigh Donaldson, a columnist with the Portland Press Herald, was fired after stealing material from AlterNet. The AlterNet.org writer whose work was plagiarized later said Donalson is a repeat offender. Link

September

None!

October

India Today's editor admitted that his editor's letter included material first published by Slate. Link

Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun apologized for plagiarizing from news agency Kyodo News. Link

November

None!

December

None!

Error of the Year: Cooks Source Theft

Unless you’re new to the Internet, you probably have an idea of what I’m talking about. As a reminder, here’s a recap I wrote for the Toronto Star:

Five years ago, writer Monica Gaudio published an article explaining that the good old American apple pie predated the United States by several hundred years. She even included a couple of delicious olde tyme pie recipes.

Gaudio’s was apparently a timeless piece of writing because it was reworked and published under her byline in Cooks Source, a small American culinary magazine. Slight problem: Gaudio had no idea her writing was being reused. She emailed the magazine to express her disappointment, and the ensuing response from editor Judith Griggs has become the stuff of Internet legend.

Griggs acknowledged that pilfering the work was “my bad” and spoke of her knowledge of copyright laws. She then set her finger a-waggin’.

“But honestly Monica, the web is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we just didn't 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it!,” Griggs wrote, employing quotes at an "alarming" rate. Also, the web is not public domain. Those cat pictures actually belong to people.

Griggs wasn’t finished, explaining that, “you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing … We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!"

Things got a little crazy from there. Gaudio’s post about the theft went viral, Cooks Source was inundated with emails and phone calls, and the press piled on. Advertisers began to flee.

Aside from the extremely poor judgment of the editor and the virality of the mistake, there’s another big reason why this incident is elevated to 2010’s Error of the Year: Amid all the mockery and insults directed at Griggs and Cooks Source, people engaged in the serious work of seeing if the magazine had stolen other work. Soon, a public Google spreadsheet became a central repository for other suspected incidents of theft. As of this writing, the spreadsheet contains over 160 Cooks Source articles that bear a striking resemblance to work first published elsewhere online.

Last year’s Trend of the Year was fact checking; this year’s Error of the Year demonstrates how effective crowdsourced fact checking can be in today’s media world.

In the end, Cooks Source shut down as a result of the error and its aftermath — offering another argument for why this particular mistake was so remarkable.

Runner Up

In November, the Independent (U.K.) published a front page photo of a man in uniform with the headline, “Wanted for the deaths of 430,000 Jews. Evaded justice for 67 years. Died a free man.” The accompanying story was about alleged Nazi war criminal Samuel Kunz. Here’s the page:

According to reports, the man in the photo was actually a Croatian actor named Ljubomir Jurkovic. The Guardian got a quote from the Independent's editor:

Simon Kelner, the editor of the Independent, said: "We are investigating the provenance of the picture, but as yet there is no conclusive proof one way or the other, and our caption acknowledges there is always a measure of uncertainty with pictures of alleged Nazis from that era." The same picture, however, is easily located on website publicity material and reviews for the 2007 film, The Living and The Dead, set in 1993 during the war in Bosnia, with flashbacks to parallel scenes from the second world war in 1943.

As of this writing, the paper has not corrected the error, or offered any details about the photo.

UPDATE December 16: The paper finally published a correction/apology:

The picture above right illustrated a front page story about the death of the Nazi war criminal, Samuel Kunz, on 23 November. We have since been told that the image is not, in fact, that of Samuel Kunz, but the Croatian actor Ljubomir Jurkovic. We are happy to make the position clear and apologise to Mr Jurkovic for the error.

Additional Errors of Note

• ABC News’ Fake Toyota Test Drive
• Gerald Posner’s serial plagiarism
• Tommaso Debenedetti’s serial fabrications

Trend of the Year: Twitter and the Challenge of Real-Time Verification

There were numerous times over the past year when news organizations and individuals struggled with the real-time nature of news and information. At the forefront of this trend is Twitter, which was arguably the most noteworthy news platform of the year.

How can journalists, news organizations and citizens best filter, verify, distribute and otherwise manage the constant flow of verified and unverified information? There is no one answer, but it’s a question that popped up again and again in 2010. I’m biased, but it strikes me as one of the great challenges — and opportunities — of this new age of news and information.

We’re seeing many of forms of misinformation spread rapidly online and take hold in real-time. Whether it was an incorrect tweet about a volcano eruption in Iceland, a Washington Post editorial writer mistaking a fake Twitter account for the real thing, or people wrongly tweeting and retweeting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had been removed from Time’s Person Of The Year contest, we saw how the real-time nature of the online world causes problems and errors.

I’m not suggesting Twitter should be seen as a negative when it comes to news and quality reporting. (I love it and you should follow me here.) But its status as an emerging platform for reporting and the sharing and dissemination of information means that it is raising new issues and introducing new challenges and opportunities. As is the real-time web as a whole. Fortunately, the challenges are being met in part by some new initiatives:

• Truthsquad tested collaborative pro-am fact checking. (This website partnered with them on a recent fact-checking campaign.)
• A new product, SwiftRiver, launched to help people manage real-time verification.
• MediaBugs went live and began offering people a way to get corrections from news organizations. (I’m an unpaid adviser to MediaBugs.)

As for Twitter, here’s one suggestion: Since it’s so easy for mistaken information to be retweeted far and wide, wouldn’t it be great if Twitter found a way to enable people to issue a corrected retweet that could automatically ping all of the people who had passed along the misinformation?

Finally, allow me this plug: I recently joined with MediaBugs executive director Scott Rosenberg to launch ReportAnError.org, a new initiative to help spread best practices for online error reporting and correction. We hope this will help bring a level of consistency to the way online news organizations handle errors and corrections. Because, as surveys from MediaBugs and Columbia Journalism Review show, we still have a huge amount of work to do in order to get news organization to begin handling corrections in an effective matter.

And along those lines, if you spot an error in this post, please email me the details.

In his case to the Press Complaints Commission Dr Lewis says that the paper ignored the bulk of his comments and mangled his quotes to make it sound like he agreed that the IPCC had been talking rubbish – and ran the "story" under the headline "UN Climate Panel Shamed by Bogus Rainforest Claim." The article ended with credit for "research by Richard North."

The story was then zapped all over the world as "Amazongate", and as a result millions of people are now under the impression that the Amazon is in no danger.

I welcome the Sunday Times’ apology for failing to accurately report my views and retract the Amazon story. As several experts told them – their story was baseless. What I find shocking about this whole episode is that an article read out [loud] and agreed with me was then switched at the last minute to one that fit with the Times’ editorial line that the IPCC contained a number of serious mistakes, but actually ignored the scientific facts.

In our Saturday post about the California Democratic Party’s ad attacking Meg Whitman but masquerading as an “issues ad,” we described the abrupt ending to our conversation with CDP Chairman John Burton. Through his spokesman, Burton on Monday complained that he had been misquoted. Burton says he didn’t say “Fuck you.” His actual words were, “Go fuck yourself.” Calbuzz regrets the error.

In an article on February 3, we implied two thirds of Haitians drank goats’ blood while practising voodoo. We are happy to make clear this is not the case.

An appraisal on Dec. 31 about David Levine, the caricaturist for The New York Review of Books who died on Dec. 29, may have left the incorrect impression that the Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin, the subject of one of Mr. Levine’s drawings, was homosexual. The description of Pushkin as “a gay man” was a reference to his demeanor, not his sexual orientation.

A story on Page 1 of Tuesday’s Telegraph quoted a White House official explaining that a Q-and-A session with dozens of teenagers in Nashua High School North on Monday was “off the record.” However, the explanation about the talk being “off the record” was, it turns out, also “off the record” and should not have been quoted.

In a May 21 ”Slatest” item, Jessica Loudis mistakenly cited a New Scientist article as saying that male bats that performed fellatio on each other before copulation. The article stated that female bats perform fellatio on male bats during copulation.

In our November 24 article "Meredith Maran's New Look at Recovered Memories," we misquoted the author and erroneously made it appear as if she had multiple lovers during the period in the mid-1980s that is discussed in the story. We also misstated the publication date of her new book, My Lie: A True Story of False Memory. It came out in September. And the photograph of Maran was taken by Cori Wells Braun.

The Butte County District Attorney's Office clarified that Oroville mini-storage stabbing suspect Zachary James Ragan does not have a horn tattooed on his forehead. Rather, he has devil horns tattooed on the sides of his forehead.

At least a couple of dozen readers kindly wrote to point out that when I called Wall Street bankers “glutinous’’ in a Wednesday column, I probably meant “gluttonous.’’ I’d love to tell you otherwise, but I apologize for the mistake.

Tina followers went to town on a caption that appeared in early editions of Saturday's paper (Wealthy Swiss threaten to leave if their taxes are raised, 27 November, page 32). Among the examples: "I am pleased to read today that Tuna Turner may be seeking a move from the land-locked tax haven of Switzerland . . . My husband was querying whether this is the same singer who was previously partnered by husband Pike?"

Lilith’s astrology column for the week starting March 6 was wrongly published last weekend. We are republishing it today. The Herald apologises for any sense of deja vu readers experience this week.

An earlier version of this blog post said that Mr. Vangelakos touted taking out the garbage in the nude as a perk of living in an empty building. That was not correct. A different apartment dweller in California made that statement. We regret the error.

It was reported today that Kimberley Stewart-Mole is now in a lesbian relationship, having left her husband Mike Hollingsworth. We have been informed and accept Ms Stewart-Mole is not a lesbian or in a relationship with a woman and apologise for suggesting otherwise.

The May 17 Broadsheet post “Miss USA Stripping Scandal: How Shocking!” incorrectly stated that Miss Nevada Katie Rees lost her title after the emergence of a “hardcore pornographic photo shoot.” The photos in question were not actually pornographic. The story has been corrected.

A capsule summary on Friday directing readers to pictures of ugly creatures at nytimes.com/science left the impression that fish and crustaceans are not part of the animal kingdom. Many of them may be ugly, but they are no less animals.

Clarification: The main headline for an article in Sunday's Arts & Entertainment section about an American Repertory Theater production of "Cabaret'' did not intend to suggest that the relationship between Amanda Palmer, who stars in the show, and Steven Bogart, her former drama teacher and mentor at Lexington High School, who is directing the production, was anything but professional. As a second headline and the story itself made clear, Palmer sought Bogart to direct the musical because she admired his professional abilities.

In the Sept. 1 article "City councillor race grows crowded with two more entrants," it incorrectly stated that Joseph Molnar was a newcomer to municipal politics. Molnar was, in fact, previously a city councillor in the early 1980s. While interpreted as a comment on his candidacy, the quote from the brief discussion — "I've never done this before" — actually referred to Molnar's request for payment from the Sentinel-Review for an exclusive interview. The request was denied.

 

YESTERDAY, a news.com.au article incorrectly stated that the Star Trek starship USS Enterprise-E, otherwise known as model NNC-1701-E, was the successor to Captain Kirk's original USS Enterprise.

It has since been brought to our attention that the NNC-1701-E in fact came two models after Captain Kirk retired and was under the command of Captain Jean Luc Picard.

User "Your Mum's Lunch" led the charge of those who correctly pointed out that after losing the original Enterprise to the Klingons, Captain Kirk was given the Excelsior Class Enterprise-B as a stop-gap measure until the refit of the Enterprise-A was completed.

Kirk's last ship was the Ambassador Class Enterprise-C.

Enterprise-D and Enterprise-E were in fact, the first of the Galaxy Class models and were under the command of Captain Picard.

There were also some concerns about whether the incorrect use of the term "hyperspace" in describing warp drive technology may harm the original Star Trek concept, particularly the books.

News.com.au apologises unreservedly for the error.

There was no intention whatsoever to suggest Captain Kirk may have commanded the Galaxy Class Starships Enterprise-D and Enterprise-E.

Any damage to the Star Trek brand incurred by the use of the term "hyperspace" is regretful.

No malice was intended and a correction to the original article will be made.

We also agree that Patrick Stewart is a handsome man, a sentiment expressed by several readers.

Addendum – We're also sorry for any errors in this apology.

ON 21 July we published an article claiming that the video games company Rockstar Games were planning to release a version of their popular Grand Theft Auto video games series titled “Grand Theft Auto Rothbury”.
We also published what we claimed would be the cover of this game, solicited comments from a family member impacted by the recent tragedy and criticised Rockstar Games for their alleged plans.
We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication and did not contact Rockstar Games prior to publishing the story. We also did not question why a best selling and critically acclaimed fictional games series would choose to base one of their most popular games on this horrifying real crime event.
It is now accepted that there were never any plans by Rockstar Games to publish such a game and that the story was false. We apologise for publishing the story using a mock-up of the game cover, our own comments on the matter and soliciting critical comments from a grieving family member.
We unreservedly apologise to Rockstar Games and we have undertaken not to repeat the claims again. We have also agreed to pay them a substantial amount in damages which they are donating to charity.

On 7 March 2010, we published an article by Zoe Margolis. In part of the first edition of the newspaper and online, this article carried the headline, “I was a hooker who became an agony aunt”. This was written by the newspaper not Ms Margolis. We accept that Ms Margolis is not and never has been “a hooker” or otherwise involved in the sex industry. The wording of the headline was a mistake and seriously defamatory of Ms Margolis. We offer our sincere apologies to Ms Margolis for the damage to her reputation and the distress and embarrassment which she has suffered.

In an item in Amy Jenkins's column last Saturday, 'One big happy family three separate houses' (27 February 2010) Amy Jenkins wrote that Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton live in two separate houses next to each other and that the nanny and two children live in a 'third house in the same street'. In fact the entire family live together in a single home that is fashioned from three adjacent former artist's studios. The comment that this arrangement is 'not so much eccentric as chilling', is unfounded and we accept that Helena Bonham Carter is a caring mother and apologise to her for suggesting otherwise.

On Friday, October 30th, Cambridge News Online published an article stating that former Newsround presenter and BBC correspondent Lizo Mzimba had visited Cambridge to research a documentary, called Shamebridge, about the university.
Our story reported how an online student newspaper alleged that Mr Mzimba had been gaffer-taped to a wall by rowdy students while undertaking research.
The News now acknowledges that Mr Mzimba has never worked on a documentary of any kind about the university, and that he was not taped to a wall by students.
We would like to apologise to Mr Mzimba for any distress caused by the article.

The Tab would like to apologise to BBC Correspondent and former Newsround presenter Lizo Mzimba for making a considerable number of false and damaging allegations about Lizo’s professional and personal behaviour, in a series of articles published in October 2009.
The Tab now acknowledges that Lizo did not visit Cambridge to research a documentary aimed at exposing and embarrassing Cambridge students, and further acknowledges that he has never worked on a documentary of any kind about Cambridge or the University.
We fully accept that he was not ‘seen draping himself over a number of girls’; it was untrue to label him as a ‘sleaze’ and a ‘perve’; and we were wrong to accuse him of loitering around ladies’ toilets to support false allegations that his behaviour while in Cambridge was debauched.
The Tab also acknowledges that Lizo was not gaffer-taped to a wall in Emmanuel College; he was not forced to lock himself in a toilet following a confrontation with students; and he was not ‘bug-eyed and sweaty’ as a result of a night of heavy drinking.
The Tab apologised unreservedly to Lizo for the articles and the distress and embarrassment they have caused.

An article (9 October 2009), ‘Hunger striker’s £7m Big Mac’, reported claims that Mr Subramanyam was caught secretly eating burgers while on hunger strike during the Tamil protest in London, wasting significant police costs. We now accept that there was no truth in these allegations and we and other media have agreed to pay him damages and have apologised to Mr Subramanyam for the distress and embarrassment caused.

And from the Sun (U.K.):

OUR article of 9 October 2009 falsely alleged that throughout a 23 day hunger strike, Mr Parameswaran Subramanyam secretly ate takeaway burgers when dishonestly claiming he was on hunger strike in support of Sri Lankan Tamils, in a campaign which was policed at considerable expense and caused the police to waste public money.
We now accept that these allegations are totally untrue. Mr Subramanyam, whose sole aim has always been to promote the Tamil cause, did not eat any food at all during his hunger strike.
We apologise to Mr Subramanyam and his family for any upset and embarrassment caused and are paying him a substantial sum in damages.

IN Court yesterday, we apologised to Stephen Hesford former MP for West Wirral. On 17 October 2009, we published an article entitled “MP who took moral stance “was a sex pest”. The article reported on proceedings before the Employment Tribunal in Liverpool the day before brought against Mr Hesford by a former employee for sexual discrimination. The article also stated that a claim for sexual harassment had been made but wrongly implied that Mr Hesford was being accused of personally having sexually harassed his former employee and as such was a hypocrite having resigned a month earlier as a matter of principle as a parliamentary aide to the Attorney General. We accepted that there has been no suggestion of any sexual misbehaviour by Mr Hesford and that the proceedings against him were in his capacity as employer. We apologised to Mr Hesford and have paid him damages and costs.

Daily Star (U.K.):

IN The Goss column on May 25 we published an article "Fan saves Amy Winehouse from Russell Brand's Dad" in which it was stated that Ron Brand had made unwelcome and inappropriate advances to Amy Winehouse, as a result of which a fan had to intervene and slap him. On May 28, we repeated the allegation in the follow up article "Russell Brand's call to Wino".
We accept that Ron Brand did not behave in such a disrespectful way towards Ms Winehouse, with whom he is good friends.
We acknowledge also that the so-called "fan" has been cautioned by the police for assault. We apologise to Mr Brand for both articles.

Lawyer did not have a drug problem: A story published in some Thursday editions about Curtis Kyles, a suspect in the killing of Crystal St. Pierre, reported incorrectly that criminal defense attorney Paul Fleming had problems with drug abuse and prostitution. The story should have said that Fleming questioned a detective about whether St. Pierre had drug and prostitution problems.

This blog post originally stated that one in three black men who have sex with me is HIV positive. In fact, the statistic applies to black men who have sex with men.

It’s a rare and wonderful thing to see a news organization criticized for making too big of a deal about an error and correction made by one of its writers. The issue is usually the opposite—a call for transparency, rather than a plea to, well, shut up.

Bell councilman: In the Oct. 13 Section A, a profile of Lorenzo Velez, the only Bell City Council member not charged with a crime, described Bell as "a city dominated by blue-color Mexican immigrants like himself." It should have said "blue-collar."

I am sorry to disappoint all the readers who wished to apply for the position, but New Orleans does not employ a “sex assessor.” That was a misprint in Wednesday’s column. It should have read “tax assessor.” Slips don’t come much more Freudian than that.

We incorrectly used the word “homocentric” when what we meant was “male-centred” (27 February, p 36).

We screwed up.
And to Tom Collins, we’re sorry.
What was reported on this newspaper’s sports pages yesterday and on our Web site for much of the day on Wednesday was wrong.
Collins, athletic director at Ball State, did not apply for the AD’s job at Dixie State College. A Tom Collins did apply for that job, but it was a different Tom Collins, not Tom Collins of BSU.
But just as much as this is an apology to Collins, this is an explanation. This is your newspaper, and the way we see it, you’re owed that at least.
Reporter Doug Zaleski had been chasing a rumor for about a week and a half that Collins was leaving. That’s when a source had originally told him that Collins had applied for the position at the school in St. George, Utah.
Now, understand that these sort of out-of-the-blue rumors aren’t uncommon to us. So as we often do in trying to flush out the validity of a rumor, Zaleski called the local newspaper, in this case, The Spectrum, which covers Dixie State. What, he wanted to know, was its sports staff hearing? If anything.
That practice, you should know, is commonplace. We, for instance, get calls all the time asking if we know anything about this rumor or that.
Anyway, The Spectrum didn’t know anything about Tom Collins and, indeed, first became aware of him thanks to us.
Still, our contact with other sources led us to believe there was reason to keep chasing the story. There was no real reason to call Collins himself, yet, but enough suspicion to forge on…

Mr. Sorensen said he suspected the headline on his obituary would read: “Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy Speechwriter,” misspelling his name and misjudging his work. “I was never just a speechwriter,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 2007.

"Tonight we received an urgent email from the PR firm representing shithead Libyan Dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi‘s son, Saif al-Islam: We incorrectly reported Beyonce performed for him this New Year’s! She actually performed for Col. Gaddafi’s other shithead son, Hannibal.

… Col. Gadaffi is in fact a ranting, terrorist-backing shithead of truly staggering proportions. It is as if God literally took a pile of shit, fashioned it into the shape of a head, placed it gingerly on the neck of Muammar al-Gaddafi, then let him run a good-sized country using only the worm-addled brain contained therein. Not a “perception”: A cold, hard, metaphorical fact.

A previous post mistakenly claimed that “Nobody in America gives a shit about hockey.” In fact, two people in America and one person in England give a shit about hockey.

A photograph published in the Toronto Sun Friday incorrectly identified a person who has the same name as a dead drug dealer. The photo showed Shawn James, winner of a Harry Jerome Award in 2005 and a social worker with UrbanPromise Toronto, a Christian-based community initiative working with children, youth and single mothers.
He is very much alive and the error raised concern among the kids he works with at Thistletown Baptist Church.
James “operates an after-school program for children at Kipling and Finch Aves. and he has no criminal background,” wrote UrbanPromise executive director Brett McBride.
The story, however, was about the trial for the accused killer of another man named Shawn “Juice” James, slain in 2007. The Sun apologizes for the error.

On Tuesday, 1 June, 2010, The Times of Nigeria published a story entitled, “Archbishop Of Benin City Resigns Over Child Sex Abuse,” regarding the resignation of Archbishop Richard Anthony Burke from the pastoral care of the Archdiocese of Saint Louis Benin City, Nigeria.
The photograph used for the article is a photograph of Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, not of Archbishop Richard Anthony Burke.
We sincerely aoplogize to Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura and regret any embarassment our action may have caused him.
Management.
The Times Of Nigeria

IN our report on April 25 last of the fatal shooting of Eamon Dunne, a photograph was captioned to identify the subject as the late Paul “Farmer” Martin, a well-known criminal, who was shot dead in the Jolly Toper in August 2009.
Due to an error, the photograph was in fact of another Paul Martin (who is pictured above), who has no association with Paul “Farmer” Martin, or with any other person named in the report, or to the activities described, including the killing of Eamon Dunne.
We apologise to Paul Martin for our mistake in using his photograph to illustrate the report and in misidentifying him. We are happy to correct the position.

IN yesterday’s edition of the Irish Sun, we published a story about an arrest made by gardai in the investigation into the murder of innocent Noel Crawford.
The photograph accompanying the story was stated to be a picture of the late Mr Crawford but it was in fact an image of the late Limerick criminal Noel Campion.
We apologise unreservedly to the Crawford family for any distress caused by the error.
We would once more like to point out that Mr Crawford had no criminal record.

An earlier version of this post misquoted Mr. Remnick on his comparison between the book and a New Yorker article he had previously written. He said the book would not be a “pumped up” version of the article; he did not say that it would not be a “pimped out” version of the article.

The report, “From Russia with love ? for the party”, on page 6 of the Sunday Morning Post on April 18 misquoted Lilia Yanark as saying the Communist Party had destroyed Russia rather than modernising it. It should have quoted her as saying, “Russian leaders have destroyed the Communist Party instead of modernising it”.

In a feature looking at the subject of postnatal depression among fathers, we should have quoted Andy Maxwell as saying "a stay-at-home dad is still unusual – parenthood as a full-time role is still considered women's work". Instead, our shorthand version of the last part of his remark had him seeming to say "full-time parenting is women's work" ('There's no support for fathers', 9 September, page 10, G2).

ON 19 June 2008 we reported that Britain’s Next Top Model finalist Jasmia Robinson’s unnamed boyfriend, was in custody for allegedly stabbing a suspected love rival.
We wish to make clear that her boyfriend David Obanobi was in fact the victim of the knife attack and not the perpetrator and was not in custody.
We apologise to Mr Obanobi for the distress and embarrassment caused.

Owing to an editing error, we said that Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall slept with more than 1,000 women in a three-year period during the mid-80s. That was meant to be more than 1,000 a year, based on his estimate of an average of three such encounters a day, as stated elsewhere in our stories (A new flame: Hucknall apology to 1,000 women he bedded, page 19, 3 December; 'I feel a bit like the antichrist', page 3, Film & Music).

Corrections In “Chávez Is Losing His Grip,” we said that Venezuela’s population is 45 million, and that its inflation is 30 percent a month. In fact, Venezuela’s population is 29 million, and its inflation is 30 percent a year. NEWSWEEK regrets the errors.

Penguin pulped 7000 copies of the Pasta Bible (ISBN 9780143011071) earlier this month due to a typo that could be considered offensive … New stock will be available from mid-May. [Sally] Bateman said this ‘was a proofreading error, and we’ll be making every effort to ensure this doesn’t happen again’.

We know someone who knows someone who knows an anonymous someone that tells us that the pulped edition included the words: Freshly ground black people.

In the April 29 “Culturebox,” Jonah Weiner originally stated that Moses was rendered as a giant glowing dreidel. Moses was depicted as the Master Control Program from the film Tron. Who sort of looks like a giant glowing dreidel.

An article about edible flowers in Wednesday’s Taste section included some examples of flowers that are not edible. These flowers, mentioned in the story, should not be eaten: lily of the valley, iris, hyacinth and some species of jasmine (Jasminum sambac flowers are edible). Linden flower tea can cause heart damage with frequent consumption. The Sun regrets the error.

We used the wrong picture of a mushroom in yesterday's paper (Fruits of the forest, 16 September, page 7, G2). The photograph was not, as the caption stated, of the death cap, Amanita phalloides but of the false death cap, Amanita citrina. The advice is the same – don't pick or eat either, as the first is deadly poisonous and the second is horrible to eat.

A piece of correspondence on the letters page expressed the view that an attempt by Jewish activists on a sailing boat to break the sea blockade around Gaza this week had been important in "reasserting the Jewish tradition of standing up for the victims of injustice" (30 September, page 35). But due to an editing error, when a version of this sentence was rendered as the letter's headline a key element, the reference to victims, was missed out, so the heading read: Reasserting the Jewish tradition of defending injustice.

Trend of the Year: Epic Organizational Failure
It’s rare to look back over a year of corrections and errors and see so many examples of organizational failure. Years past have seen plenty of malfeasance by individuals, but 2008 is remarkable for news organizations that pursued completely outrageous behavior.

In Japan, the Mainichi Daily News, the English website of Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun, had to be relaunched thanks to its repeated publishing of false, titillating stories. In England, the Express Newspapers chain published a series of major front page apologies to repent for its wildly inaccurate and damaging reports about a British family. In the United States, the Bulletin, a weekly in Montgomery County, Texas, was revealed to be perhaps the first newspaper to pursue plagiarism as a standard operating procedure.

As opposed to other years when a story (think Sago Mine disaster) dominated accuracy news, the headline for 2008 is that three news organizations knowingly and willfully fabricated, plagiarized or otherwise abdicated their ethics on a regular basis.

For their amazing feats of organizational failure, Mainichi Daily News, Express Newspapers and the Bulletin are each presented with a Regret the Error Award of Demerit. These three organizations join the only previous recipient, The Sun (UK) tabloid, which received the dishonor in 2006 for its repeated scandalous errors, remarkable apologies, and nasty pseudo-apologies. Congrats all around.

Other Trends of Note
Rick Reilly: Cat Nip To Plagiarists
Sports writer Rick Reilly deserves credit for having produced work of such brilliance that two different sports writers plagiarized his work in a period of less than two months. No wonder ESPN paid millions to hire him away from Sports Illustrated. One of the thieves, Dave Pratt, also offered up what has to be the accuracy quote of the year after he was asked by the CBC about his theft: “It was a Saturday and I wanted to get out of [the office] before noon.” Bravo.

David Gest Does Not Have Herpes*
Four different newspapers published apologies this year because they had reported – inaccurately! – that David Gest has herpes. Specifically, they reported that Gest alleged that he had contracted herpes from Liza Minnelli on their wedding night. The offenders were The Independent (UK), Daily Mail (UK), Times (UK) and the Baltimore Sun. (Perhaps I missed a few others.) Read all four apologies here, and here’s one from the Daily Mail:

In articles published on 23 and 26 May 2008, we gave the impression that Mr Gest had contracted a sexually transmitted infection and alleged that he had Liza Minnelli’s dog killed without her knowledge.
This was wrong. David Gest has never had a sexually transmitted infection and did not have Ms Minnelli’s dog killed.
We apologise to Mr Gest for any embarrassment caused.

Obama, Again
It’s a rule that the more someone is in the news, the more they’ll be the victim of media error. Obama errors were one of 2007’s Trends of the Year. They deserve mention again. Included below in this year’s Crunks is a Treasury of Obama Corrections from 2008. The next four years are going to be interesting…

New Award: The Ian Mayes Award for Writing Wrongs
Last year, Ian Mayes, one of the great correction writers of all time, stepped down as the readers’ editor of the Guardian. His corrections were sublime: to the point, witty, and self-effacing. (You can read the Regret the Error tribute to him at the end of last year’s Crunks, or buy his book of Guardian corrections.) With his blessing, I have created an award in his honor, the Ian Mayes Award for Writing Wrongs.
It will be awarded to the publication or person that demonstrates wit and wisdom in the writing of corrections. Mayes has agreed with my suggestion for the first recipient of the award. He is David Hummerston, the Saturday editor/editorial counsellor and readers’ editor of the West Australian. Yes, the man wears many hats.
In addition to everlasting fame, Hummerston will receive a signed copy of Ian Mayes’ book, Journalism Right and Wrong: Ethical and other issues raised by readers in the Guardian’s Open Door Column. Here’s a sample of Hummerston’s work from 2008:

Old Sparky: The compilers and suppliers of our On This Day column deserve to learn a lot more about electric execution. The recidivist column wrongly stated that the first electric chair execution took place on July 7, 1890. In fact, it was Wednesday, August 6, 1890 in New York – ironically then known as The Electric City of the Future – that wife-killer William Kemmler became the first man executed in an electric chair. Although Dr George C. Fell said Kemmler “never suffered a bit of pain”, a reporter who also witnessed the execution wrote in the New York Herald the next day that “strong men fainted and fell like logs upon the floor”.

Bad conduct: Charles Mackerras was not born in Australia (Emma hits heights, Today, page 6, December 1). The eminent orchestra conductor was born to Australian parents in 1925 in musical-sounding Schenectady, New York. Apropos of nothing, Schenectady was where, in 1886, the Machine Works company was set up by Thomas Edison, who also knew a thing or two about conductors.

E=mc3+1: As mathematicians, journalists make fine geishas. One of the paper’s most perspicacious readers has again successfully challenged our careless checking of figures in reports received from overseas and interstate. In one report we had an Olympic swimming pool holding a meagre 1000 megalitres – a waist-high depth that would becalm Eamon Sullivan (’Angel’, 4, drowns as plastic dam wall fails, page 17, November 25). And in another report we had 40,000 US “gleaners” filling 80,000 4-6kg sacks with 250kg of vegetables – a minuscule 6g per person (Hard times bite in America, World page 28, November 26). We still don’t know what we meant.

Hip hip, Horatio: Legendary British Admiral Horatio Nelson would have turned 250 today. We published a fascinating but mathematically muddled report from London about an auction today, wrongly stating it would mark the 250th anniversary of his death (Ring and box highlights of Nelson anniversary sale, page 36, September 25). If this was true, he would have died 47 years before the Battle of Trafalgar, where he was struck by a French sniper’s bullet and died on the first day of combat on October 21, 1805. Like Nelson, we had only one eye on the job.

Birdbrains: We swiftly swallowed the information supplied to us which described a photo of a bird in flight as a Rottnest Island Sparrow (The science of fine photography, page 19, August 16). As any eagle-eyed ornithologist would attest it was, of course, the much less rare Welcome Sparrow.

Deep depression: Our economics editor has officially gone from recession to depression. By mangling the names of two of history’s most highly decorated economists, John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, we not only created an economy of truth but blamed poor Milton Keynes for having “crazy” ideas (We can all learn from Depression, Opinion, page 21, September 29). Milton Keynes is an English town famous not only for its grid system of roads and its herd of concrete cows but because in 1998 it was deemed so boring that even chartered accountants refused to move there. The “crazy” ideas comment was intended for John Maynard Keynes, who was voted one of Time Magazine’s most important people of the 20th century – and who was not boring.

Congratulations!

Correction of the Year
One of the year’s most coveted awards goes to none other than Dave Barry. Here’s how the famous humor writer chose to correct a misspelling he made in a column published by the Miami Herald:

In yesterday’s column about badminton, I misspelled the name of Guatemalan player Kevin Cordon. I apologize. In my defense, I want to note that in the same column I correctly spelled Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarak, Poompat Sapkulchananart and Porntip Buranapraseatsuk. So by the time I got to Kevin Cordon, my fingers were exhausted.

Other Favorites
Slate:

In the June 20 “Culturebox,” Jonah Weiner stated that Lil Wayne was the first hip-hop artist to fantasize about eating his competition. Other rappers have contemplated consuming their rivals.

The Age:

AN ARTICLE in last week’s Sunday Age, “Born to be, um, mild — and possibly damp”, contained views about biker groups that were inserted in the editing process.
As well, the survey of motorcyclists who rode for about three hours every weekend found that many had problems emptying their bladders.
The story stated that bike riders could be “bedwetters”. The error was made during editing.

Washington Times:

Friday’s Pruden on Politics column quoted a spokesman for the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv saying the newspaper had been encouraged by the Barack Obama campaign to publish a written prayer left by Mr. Obama in Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall and retrieved by an onlooker. A second Ma’ariv spokesman and the Obama campaign dispute the first Ma’ariv spokesman’s account, and the newspaper refuses to comment further. The column also said the Obama campaign posted a video about the candidate’s visit to Jerusalem on the Internet site YouTube. The video appears to have been posted by an independent blogger who inserted a counterfeit “Paid for by Obama for America” sign-off.

New York Times:

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.”

The Guardian:

We said that, in the American TV drama 24, Jack Bauer, the counter-terrorism agent, resorted to electrocution to extract information. You cannot extract information from someone who has been electrocuted because they are dead (Questioning, the Jack Bauer way, page 1, April 19).

Press and Journal (UK):

We have been asked to point out that Stuart Kennedy, of Flat E, 38 Don Street, Aberdeen, who appeared at Peterhead Sheriff Court on Monday, had 316 pink, frilly garters confiscated not 316 pink, frilly knickers.

The Guardian:

Gore Vidal was once head-butted by Norman Mailer, not the other way round. Vidal described the altercation as “marshmallow to marshmallow” when asked about it at the Hay festival 2008 (Diary, page 9, G2, May 27).

National Post (Canada):

There is no documented evidence to suggest dance poles sold at Condom Shack cannot bear the weight of a user. An unsubstantiated claim appeared in a Post Homes feature on Saturday.

Error of the Year: LA Times Shakur Shooting Story
After six months of investigative work, the Los Angeles Times published a story in March that claimed to offer significant new evidence about a 1994 attack on Tupac Shakur.
The story relied in large part on documents provided to reporter Chuck Philips by James Sabatino, an inmate. The article suggested that the shooting was perpetrated by associates of Sean “Diddy” Combs, and that Combs was aware of the attack. Roughly a week after the story was published, The Smoking Gun tore it to shreds. The site reported that, among other deficiencies in the story, the “FBI documents” obtained by the Times via Sabatino were forged. The accusations leveled in the story against Combs and his associates were false, not to mention defamatory.
On March 27, the day after the Smoking Gun published its report, the Times apologized for its reporting. An excerpt:

A Los Angeles Times story about a brutal 1994 attack on rap superstar Tupac Shakur was partially based on documents that appear to have been fabricated, the reporter and editor responsible for the story said Wednesday.

On April 7, it issued a formal retraction. An excerpt:

The article, titled “An Attack on Tupac Shakur Launched a Hip-Hop War” and written by Times staff writer Chuck Philips, purported to relate “new” information about a 1994 assault on rap star Tupac Shakur, including a description of events contained in FBI reports.
The Times has since concluded that the FBI reports were fabricated and that some of the other sources relied on — including the person Philips previously believed to be the “confidential source” cited in the FBI reports — do not support major elements of the story.
Consequently, The Times is retracting the March 17 Web publications as well as a shorter version of the article that appeared on Page E1 in the March 19 Calendar section of the newspaper. Statements that Philips made in two online chats, on March 18 and 25, and on The Times’ Soundboard blog on March 21 also are being retracted.

Additional background here and here.

Typo of the Year
The Valley News, a newspaper distributed in Vermont and New Hampshire**, committed what many journalists and editors would agree is just about the most embarrassing typo possible: it misspelled its own name on the front page. Behold:

Here’s the resulting Editor’s Note:

Other Favorites
The Center City Weekly Press gets Bon Jovi’s name wrong:

In a story about Obama’s plans for a vice presidential pick, AP noted that McCain was considering Sen. Joe Lieberman, “the Democratic vice presidential prick in 2000 who now is an independent.” (Emphasis added.) Here are some of the websites that published the typo:

News broke in August that columnist Robert Novak, who had recently revealed that he had a brain tumor, was retiring. An early version of an AP story suffered from a rather unfortunate omission in the second sentence of the last paragraph:

The Guardian:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel is One Hundred Years of Solitude, not One Hundred Years of Solicitude as we had it (Actor plans to film long-lost Garcia Marquez screenplay, page 20, July 15).

The Guardian:

Some confusion arose in a review of a television drama about knife crime as a result of mishearing the term shanking, which means stabbing someone with a knife, as shagging (Last night’s TV, page 27, G2, October 2).

New York Times:

A headline in some editions of The Arts on Monday with an article about the Academy Awards ceremony misstated, in some copies, the title of the film that won best picture. It is, of course, “No Country for Old Men,” not “Old Country for Old Men.”

Finally, note the name of David Gregory’s show in this AP story:

Apology of the Year
The Independent (UK) is a first time winner of this award. It earns the prize for an apology that recounted some harsh false allegations while also managing to misspell the word “this” and leave off a quotation mark. Stellar all around:

In an item in Tuesday’s ‘Pandora’, ‘Strange but is it true? The mysterious boycott of Little Britain’, we quoted a New York radio presenter who said that he thought that the claimed West Hollywood Gay Lesbian Alliance protests about Little Britain’s series for the USA were most likely planted by someone’s publicist to generate publicity… ’ We accept that MBC PR, publicists for Little Britain, did not do thiis. We also accept that ‘Little Britain’s new US show is not the ‘most politically incorrect , offensive and obnoxious material ever seen in this country’ and is suitable for broadcast. We apologise to all concerned.

Other Favorites
Daily Star (UK):

OUR article last Tuesday headed “It’s Sven Giggle Eriksson” pictured Mr Eriksson in a hotel restaurant with a young lady.
We wrongly assumed that the lady was an admirer and suggested that he was fondling her.
In fact the lady was Lina, Mr Eriksson’s daughter, with whom he was having a normal fatherly embrace.
We apologise to Mr Eriksson and his daughter for the embarrassment and distress caused by the publication of the photographs and incorrect assumptions made about them.

The Sun (UK):

AN article on March 29, “Everyone off my bus, I need to pray”, stated that Arunas Raulynaitis, a London bus driver and a Muslim, asked passengers to leave his bus so he could pray and that passengers later refused to re-board the bus because they saw a ruck-sack which made them think he might be a fanatic.
The article included pictures of Mr Raulynaitis praying.
We now accept that these allegations were completely untrue.
Mr Raulynaitis is not a fanatic and he did not ask passengers to leave his bus to allow him to pray. In fact, he was praying during his statutory rest break. We apologise to Mr Raulynaitis for the embarrassment and distress caused.

Canberra Times:

An opinion article published in The Canberra Times by Irfan Yusuf on August 18, ”Justice the remedy required to help Bosnia heal”, cited the US analyst Daniel Pipes as predicting that Europe’s next Holocaust victims would be Muslim migrants and it alleged that Mr Pipes suggested Muslims thoroughly deserved such slaughter.
The Canberra Times and Irfan Yusuf accept that Mr Pipes never predicted nor has he ever endorsed a Holocaust of European Muslims, and they unreservedly apologise to him for the errors.

The Sunday Mail (Australia):

AN ARTICLE published on July 20 stated that Chris Evert admitted in an interview to having an affair with Greg Norman while both were married to their previous partners, and the affair caused the demise of their marriages.
That article was incorrect because Ms Evert did not make that admission.
The Sunday Mail apologises to Ms Evert and Mr Norman for the error.

Calgary Sun:

Michael Platt’s editorial on July 21, 2008 may have inadvertently left the impression that General Motors in some way supported neo-Nazis. That was not the intention of the line in question and the Sun greatly regrets not being more clear in the story. The Sun apologizes to GM, its dealers and customers. General Motors has employees in six continents, 192 countries, 23 time zones, and works in more than 50 languages. GM strives to create a culture and a business environment based upon inclusion, mutual respect, responsibility, and understanding of all people.

Best Correction to Political Reporting
A report from Agence France-Presse:

Le Monde newspaper published a front-page apology today to ask for President Nicolas Sarkozy’s forgiveness after mixing up the names of his third wife, Carla Bruni, with his second, Cecilia.
“An unfortunate slip” caused it to write about Cecilia Bruni-Sarkozy in an article in Monday’s edition, the prestigious newspaper said. “We were of course referring to the wife of the head of state, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
“To our readers, to Mr and Mrs Sarkozy, to Mrs Cecilia Attia, we present our most sincere apologies,” it wrote.
Sarkozy married pop star Bruni in February after last year divorcing his second wife, Cecilia, who recently married events organiser Richard Attias and lives with him in Dubai.

(Here’s my Columbia Journalism Review column about this apology.)

Most Cutting Correction
Private Eye (UK):

Our item about Slough in the last issue said the leader of the Tory group on the council was Cllr Diana Coad. In fact that honour currently falls to one Derek Cryer. “Lady” Diana, who is also the party’s parliamentary candidate for the town, merely behaves as if she is leader.
Apologies to the invisible man.

Other favorites
The Times (UK):

We may owe an apology to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Last month we dubbed it “Whitehall’s answer to Sir Elton John” after it emerged that it had spent £ 46,000 on pot plants in two years. Now we learn that staff at the Department for Children, Schools and Families spent £ 78,000 on pot plants in a single year. The crown, thus, is theirs.

The Washington Post:

A photo caption in the Oct. 22 Style section incorrectly referred to Bill O’Reilly as a “right-wing pundit.” The Fox News host presents himself as an independent.

(Here’s my Columbia Journalism Review Daily column about this correction.)

Award for Most Corrected Story
The Post-Dispatch published a lengthy correct/apology to a front page story:

On the front page of last Sunday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, we published the story of a woman identified as Virginia Gillis. She was featured in an Easter story in which she described in detail a past of victimization, homelessness and despair followed by recovery and repair.
We have since learned that a number of the details in that story were inaccurate. Further, our verification procedures were not followed during the reporting and editing process. In short, this story did not meet our standards for publication.
We apologize for this journalistic breakdown. We value the trust you place in us every time you pick up the Post-Dispatch or log onto STLtoday.com, and we understand that incidents such as this put that trust at risk.
Last Monday morning, we were contacted by someone who told us that information provided by the woman in the story was inaccurate.
We immediately began a review of our reporting. We conducted extensive records searches and interviewed sources to check the details provided by the woman. We have learned:
- The woman’s name is Pamala Brown, according to police, her mother and other people who know her. She also has used the spelling Pamela.
- Law enforcement officials in Crawford, Gasconade and Franklin counties have active warrants for Brown for violating probation on felony bad check and forgery charges. Crystal City has a warrant for Brown for failure to appear on DWI and other traffic charges.
- The Missouri Department of Revenue has no record of the drivers license number that appears on the license the woman provided us during this review.
- Law enforcement and fire officials in Jefferson County have no records of the violence the woman described in the story. She said her husband burned down her house in 2005 and a few weeks later slashed her throat. She said the attack left the long scar across her neck.
“I think we would have recognized the offense even under a different name,” said Jefferson County Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins, who was the county prosecutor at the time. Wilkins said authorities checked the name the woman provided the newspaper for her ex-husband, as well as variations.
- Pamala Brown is 51 years old, not 42, according to public documents.
- Pamala Brown attended Parkway West High School but did not graduate, according to school officials.
- Other information in the story about the woman’s marriage and children conflicts with information we have since obtained from public documents and family members …

It goes on from there. Read it all here.

Best Photo Fakery

Roy Greenslade of the Guardian had the background on the above image:

This award-winning photograph, showing a herd of endangered Tibetan antelopes apparently undisturbed by a passing train on the controversial Qinghai-Tibet railway, has been exposed as a fake. The image was widely hailed in China as a symbol of harmonious co-existence between man and nature. But photographer Liu Wei-qiang admitted it was a fabrication after commenters on a Chinese online photography forum questioned its authenticity.
“The train was real, and so were the antelopes,” said Liu in a posting on the forum. “But the magic moment just didn’t happen even after I had waited for two weeks.” Therefore, he decided to merge together one picture of a passing train with another of the migrating animals “to raise the public awareness of antelope protection”.
The merged picture was published by more than 200 media outlets around the world and won Liu a bronze medal in the 2006 Most Influential News Photos of the Year competition, sponsored by CCTV, China’s state television. Liu has now been dismissed from the Daqing Evening News in Heilongjiang province.

Best Recipe Error
A report from Reuters:

Celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson has apologized after accidentally recommending a potentially deadly plant in organic salads.
The chef and TV presenter said in a magazine article that the weed henbane, also known as stinking nightshade, made an excellent addition to summertime meals…
Henbane, or Hyoscyamus niger, is toxic and can cause hallucinations, convulsions, vomiting and in extreme cases death.
Worrall Thompson, who was discussing his passion for organic foods, had confused the plant with another of a similar name.
The magazine “Healthy & Organic Living” printed an urgent warning: “Henbane is a very toxic plant and should never be eaten. As always, check with an expert when foraging or collecting wild plants.”
Henbane, a close relative of deadly nightshade, was used by Dr Crippen to kill his wife in 1910, and is thought to have been the main ingredient in the poison Romeo took in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet.”
The chef had intended to refer to fat hen, a weed rich in vitamin C, that is edible, media reports said…
Worrall Thompson was reported in the media as saying the confusion had been “a bit embarrassing.”

Most Puzzling Correction
New York Times:

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.

Best Dereliction of Duty
A staffer at the North County Times was fired and another was suspended for what the paper’s editor called “a deeply misguided joke.” The joke entailed changing an AP story to read that an LA City Councilman had “strangled a kitten at a City Hall news conference.” The original copy reported that he “held a kitten at a City Hall news conference.” The paper apologized:

We published a story Wednesday that contained a terrible mistake.
To be more precise, we carried a story on our Back Page by the Associated Press about a new law in Los Angeles that requires most pet owners to spay or neuter their dogs and cats. So far, so good.
However, two of our editors inserted an error into the account that fundamentally mischaracterized a press conference attended by Los Angeles City Councilman Tony Cardenas, one of the law’s co-authors. Our Web site, nctimes.com, carries the correct version.
After conducting an internal investigation, I believe that our editors were not being malicious, furthering some political agenda, or expressing ill will toward Cardenas or anyone else. Instead, I have concluded that our mistake flowed from a deeply misguided joke that made its way into print.
Still, there is nothing more important than running a newspaper that our readers can trust. We have fired the editor who initiated the unfortunate “joke.” And we have suspended a second editor who failed to keep the error out of print. Further, we will adopt improved quality control measures and training to prevent similar mistakes.
We apologize to Councilman Cardenas, to the Associated Press and to our readers.

Best Translation Error
The Guardian:

In our account of an interview, conducted in English and in Japanese through a translator, with members of the Yellow Magic Orchestra (Back to the future, Film and Music, page 13, July 4), keyboardist Ryuichi Sakamoto was quoted in a way which may have implied that he found the presence of black people at a filming of the Soul Train TV show in Hollywood in 1980 “intimidating”. Sakamoto denies having said this, and our interviewer confirms there was nothing in their conversation that could have suggested that Sakamoto held racist views.

Service To Readers Award
An MSNBC correction to a Forbes Traveler article it had published:

A ForbesTraveler.com story published in February referred to the Web site beijingticketing.com as a ticket resource for travelers visiting Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee have since filed a lawsuit against beijingticketing.com and other ticket-selling Web sites, claiming they were deceitful. In a statement, the USOC said consumers who have made purchases “have not received any tickets, despite numerous phone calls and e-mails,” the Associated Press reported. For more information, click here.

Best Misquote
A report from the BBC:

Some Israelis may have choked on their breakfast when a newspaper headline quoted France’s foreign minister saying Israel might devour its arch foe, Iran.
Hebrew daily Haaretz splashed across its front page that Bernard Kouchner said Israel might “eat” the Islamic Republic before it got nuclear arms.
The following day Haaretz apologised, saying Mr Kouchner, speaking in English, had actually said “hit”.
Mr Kouchner also offered a diplomatic apology for the “phonetic confusion”.
When Mr Kouchner was asked about the possibility of Tehran developing a nuclear weapon, the Hebrew and English editions of Haaretz newspaper quoted him saying:
“I honestly don’t believe that it will give any immunity to Iran. First, because you [Israelis] will eat them before.”
He went on to say: “And this is the danger. Israel has always said it will not wait for the bomb to be ready. I think that [the Iranians] know. Everyone knows.”
The comments were published on Sunday, as Mr Kouchner ended a two-day visit to the region, under the headline in Hebrew saying “You will eat Iran before it achieves an atomic bomb”.
On Monday, the paper published a correction and apologised for the “misunderstanding”, but it also said the transcription had been cleared with Mr Kouchner’s office prior to publication

Other Favorites
The Australian:

In a report on page 3 of The Australian on April 10, “Girl from the Gong to take on the world”, it was stated that a contestant at the Miss World Australia beauty pageant had said she “believed in injustice and inequality”. This was incorrect. The contestant said: “I believe in justice, equality and integrity.” The Australian apologises for the error.

The Guardian:

An article about films that portray women as gold-diggers made two mistakes in relation to Sex and the City. The opening line of the television series was not “Cupid has flown the coop”, but “Cupid has flown the co-op”. We said of the film: “Although the women’s professions were never at the centre of the series, the movie has gone a step further: three of the four former women now support themselves via their relationships.” That should have been “three of the four former career women” (Material girls, page 6, June 12).

Los Angeles Times:

‘Gossip Girl’: In Sunday’s Calendar section, the Monitor column about “Gossip Girl” misquoted two lines of dialogue between characters discussing one’s relationship. It read: “Jenny: ‘Is that why we went dessert?’ Elise: ‘You went dessert?!?!?!’ ” The correct lines on the show were: “Jenny: ‘Is that why we went to third?’ Friend: ‘You went to third?’ ”

Misidentifications: Ode to the Victims
Toronto Sun:

A photo on Pg. 5 in the Friday edition identified fraud victim Richard Rand as the man guilty of 190 counts of fraud. The Sun apologizes to Mr. Rand for any embarrassment this may have caused.

Toronto Sun:

On page 14 yesterday, the Sun mistakenly identified Margherita Gervasi as a stripper. She is a waitress and bartender. The Sun regrets the error.

Ottawa Sun:

David Hoe was misidentified as a former sex worker in a Sept. 19 article in the Sun. The Sun regrets the error.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Bob Fredrick, a clinical social worker and therapist in Atlanta, is not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. A story in the Sunday Living section had incorrect information, including a misspelling of his name.

New York Daily News:

A CAPTION in some editions of yesterday’s Daily News incorrectly identified a photograph of Detective Sgt. Fred Santoro of the NYPD’s Organized Crime Investigations Division (above) as Frank Santoro, a defendant in a Bronx murder case. The News regrets the error.

Austin American-Statesman:

A story on Thursday’s Page B1 transposed the name of an Austin police officer with that of a man facing sexual assault charges. The story should have made clear that former motel manager Douglas Wayne Ward is the suspect in the case, and that police say they found photos of children on a computer seized from Ward.

New York Times:

A picture last Sunday with an essay about a crack house in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, was published in error. The three houses in the picture are on the same street as the crack house, but none of the three figured in the essay.

Best Porn Error
The Badger Herald:

Due to a reporting error, the Feb. 7 article “‘Porn Nation’ to present tonight” erroneously cited a pornographic website as the sexual addiction survey. The correct website is www.mysexsurvey.com. We regret the error.

Best Photo Error
A report from the Press Gazette (UK):

The Eastern Daily Press has apologised after confusing the Bishop of Norwich with serial killer Steve Wright, known as the “Suffolk strangler”.
The paper printed a letter from Rupert Read of the Eastern Region Green Party calling for brothels to be closed following the Ipswich murders saying: “Surely that is the best memorial to the women who died at the hands of Steve Wright (pictured)..”
But the EDP printed a picture of the Bishop of Norwich, the Right Rev Graham James, with his dog collar clearly visible, instead of Wright.
The paper has printed an apology and has agreed to make a donation to a Christian group that helps prostitutes of which the Bishop is a patron.
The apology said: “The Eastern Daily Press would like to unreservedly apologise to the Bishop of Norwich, the Rt Rev Graham James following the publication of his picture on yesterday’s Letters Page.
“The photograph of Bishop Graham was used alongside a letter from Cllr Rupert Read from the Eastern Region Green Party who was writing about way of protecting sex workers by decriminalising prostitution.
“We would like to thank Bishop Graham for his understanding, and in the circumstances, the EDP has made a donation to the Magdalene Group – a Norwich-based Christian organisation which offers care to women who are drawn to prostitution. Bishop Graham is a patron of the charity.”

Best Headline Error
The American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site has a standard practice of using the word “homosexual” instead of “gay.” They even set up a filter to automatically make the change. This didn’t serve ONN well when a sprinter named Tyson Gay made news at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials. He suddenly became Tyson Homosexual when the site’s filter got a hold of an AP story:

Other Favorites
The Cambodia Daily:

Corrections: Due to an editing error, the headline “Three Suspects On Loose in Beheading Case” (Page 21, May 8)* should not have stated that the slain man was beheaded. Due to an editing error, the headline “Bridge From Snake Island Nearly Done” (Page 29, May 9) should have stated that bridge construction was just beginning.

The Sun-Sentinel’s subhead on a story about salvia:

“Bill makes possession of Saliva a felony.”

The West Australian:

Binge drinking: Deakin University professor of psychology Robert Cummins points out that neither he nor his research said that binge drinking could be a good thing (Professor sees positive side of binge drinking, page 17, October 23). He said although his Wellbeing Index research found that the feeling of wellbeing in 18-25 year-olds remained high even after three drinks, this was not a good thing and made it difficult for policy-makers to devise controls for binge drinking. Moderation was the key to the link between alcohol consumption and happiness.

Best Case of Mistaken Identity
A summary of the error by the offender, the Tribune Chronicle:

It was incorrectly reported in Tuesday’s Tribune Chronicle that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton answered questions from voters in a local congressman’s office.
Reporter John Goodall, who was assigned to the story, spoke by telephone with Hillary Wicai Viers, who is a communications director in U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson’s staff. According to the reporter, when Viers answered the phone with ‘‘This is Hillary,’’ he believed he was speaking with the Democratic presidential candidate, who had made several previous visits to the Mahoning Valley.
The quotes from Viers were incorrectly attributed to Clinton.
Wilson, the 6th District representative, hosted the first of six ‘‘economic listening tours’’ in his office on Boardman Canfield Road Monday. The talks were for people living in Columbiana and Mahoning counties. Wilson’s district stretches from Mahoning County to Scioto on the Kentucky border.
‘‘We rely on reporters to gather accurate information, and in this case, that obviously did not happen,” said Frank Robinson, editor of the paper. He said the the [sic] newspaper takes the matter very seriously and the situation is being reviewed …

Best Numerical Error
New York Times:

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.

Other Favorites
Washington City Paper:

Due to an error by Rachel Kaufman, last week’s Young & Hungry column mentioned a free sandwich received by Clarence Webb “66 years ago,” when Webb was a rookie in the Alexandria Police Department. Webb, as reported, is 74 and was not 8 years old when he joined the police department; the sandwich in question was received 52 years ago.

Sydney Morning Herald:

THURSDAY’S article “Plastic bag use surges by billion” said the more than 4 billion bags which were imported into Australia last year contained about 22 million tonnes of plastic. To the relief of shoppers, the correct figure is about 22,000 tonnes.

Best Editor’s Note
New York Times:

An article on March 16 profiling three sex workers in the wake of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation after revelations that he patronized prostitutes misconstrued how two of the women, identified by the pseudonyms Faith O’Donnell and Sally Anderson, said they earned a living. The resulting misrepresentation of the two women’s work included a headline that referred to them as “high-priced call girls” and a paragraph that said they practiced “the 21st-century version of the oldest profession.”
The reporter who interviewed them, one of two who worked on the article, never explicitly asked the women whether they traded sex for money or were prostitutes, call girls or escorts; he used the term “sex workers,” a term they used themselves that describes strippers and lap dancers as well as prostitutes. Though Ms. Anderson advertises herself as a “dominatrix with a holistic approach,” he did not ask her whether that meant she also performed sex acts for money, nor did he ask Ms. O’Donnell what her work actually was before characterizing it. He and the editors should have explored whether he had determined these things precisely.
After the article was published, both women contacted The Times and said they do not perform sex for money; Ms. O’Donnell refused to be specific about what she does.
Because of an editing error, the article misstated the political work of the New York chapter of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, a group in which Ms. Anderson is active; it advocates the decriminalization of prostitution, not its legalization, arguing that sex work should be regulated through labor law like other jobs but not subject to additional restrictions. Another editing error changed the meaning of Ms. Anderson’s observation that “no one” had come to an event she had helped plan to highlight difficulties faced by prostitutes; Ms. Anderson meant that no journalists had attended.

Best Delayed Correction
New York Times:

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.)

Runner Up
New York Times:

An article in some editions on Wednesday about Fordham University’s plan to give an ethics prize to Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer misspelled the surname of another Supreme Court justice who received the award in 2001. She is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not Ginsberg. The Times has misspelled her name at least two dozen times since 1980; this is the first correction the paper has published.

Award for Correcting The Non-Existent
The Politico:

An earlier version of this story conflated two non-existent audio tapes of Michelle Obama.

Obama Errors ’08: A Treasury
Quite the predictive lede on this Reuters story:

Rocky Mountain News:

One of the items on this list has been removed because it mistakenly repeated a report that Barack Obama holds dual United States-Kenyan citizenship. This erroneous information was never reported in the Rocky Mountain News print edition.

New York Post:

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.

(Here’s my Columbia Journalism Review online column about this correction.)

Newsweek:

An item in the Periscope section of the Jan. 21 issue mischaracterized New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s use of the phrase “shuck and jive” as a direct reference to the political style of Sen. Barack Obama. In fact, Cuomo, a Hillary Clinton supporter, was speaking in broad terms about how candidates interact with voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to a review of the transcript by The New York Times.

New York Times:

In describing an encounter between Barack Obama and a schoolboy in Zanesville, Ohio, Maureen Dowd’s column on Wednesday used a campaign pool report. The report said that Mr. Obama had declined to bump fists with the boy. The campaign now says that the boy was trying to get Mr. Obama to autograph his hand, but the candidate declined, citing the possible reaction of the boy’s mother.

The Guardian:

The toxic Texan’s foreign policy doctrine will endure, page 26, June 20, was referring to, not endorsing, the position taken by others when it used the term “apostate Muslim” in relation to Barack Obama. Obama has never been a Muslim.

Kansas City Star:

The Buzz on Saturday incorrectly described when a Dallas crowd applauded Barack Obama. It was when he blew his nose.

Best Naming Error
Wall Street Journal:

An Aug. 9 essay on Jamaican runners in Weekend Journal that referred to Jamaican immigration to Canada in the 1960s incorrectly identified Canada as New Canada. Separately, an Aug. 16 Olympics article on Canada’s medal count incorrectly referred to the country as the Commonwealth of Canada.

Best Blog Correction
Back in January, The Consumerist reported on a rather vulgar-yet-amusing post on Wil Wheaton’s blog. After seeing the Consumerist post, Wheaton contacted them to clarify things. From the resulting Consumerist post and correction:

Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek: The Next Generation) would like you to know that he does not and will not endorse AAA Insurance. UPDATE: We initially reported that Mr. Wheaton disliked all of AAA. Not so. He tells us:
“I’m happy with the rest of the AAA services I’ve used, and continue to use. The insurance, though, can eat a bag of dicks.”
We regret the error.

Best Blotter Error
The Post-Standard:

A police blotter listing in some editions of Neighbors on Thursday mistakenly listed charges against Mark F. Campbell, 54, of Central Square. The listing incorrectly said the Oswego County Sheriff’s Office charged Campbell with aggravated driving while intoxicated, driving while intoxicated, third-degree aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle and failure to keep right. Campbell faces no such charges. Campbell appears in a sheriff’s report that says on Dec. 26 his car was struck by a horse on county Route 4 in Palermo. The collision resulted in no tickets.

Best Use of Pseudonym
Raleigh News & Observer:

When the letter criticizing the person who had tossed some litter from Char-Grill was published March 24, we noted that we had changed the offender’s name (as recorded on an order slip that was found by the letter-writer). Our intent, as explained in an editor’s note, was to avoid implicating others who might have the same, unusual first name. Instead, we used what was meant to be a generic “Susie.”
Wouldn’t you know it, but a faithful Char-Grill customer is named Susie, and even sports her name on two license plates. Mrs. Susie Wright informs us that it wasn’t she who tossed uneaten french fries and the remains of a grilled cheese sandwich in front of Fletcher Park.

Best Historical Error
This year marked the 400th anniversary of Quebec City. It was a big deal for the city, and French magazine Paris Match decided to dedicate an issue to the celebration. Unfortunately, its editors were under the impression that it was the province of Quebec’s 400th anniversary. Quebec City barely earned a mention in the issue. Folks in Montreal were amused by the error, while those in Quebec City were less than impressed. From a story that appeared in The Gazette, an English daily in Montreal:

A leading French magazine’s special edition on Quebec’s 400th anniversary confused the founding of the city with that of the province. Even though the story should have been about Quebec City’s 400th birthday, the 30-page special doesn’t have a line about it.
Instead, it’s all about Montreal, its artists, its universities and its restaurants, a double slight because of the rivalry between the two cities.
The editor-in-chief of Paris Match admits the magazine got it wrong by leaving Quebec City out of the picture in the special edition, which hit newsstands in 120 countries yesterday.

Additional background is here.

Best Hoax
In November, activist groups came together to publish a hoax edition of the New York Times. The paper was handed out in U.S. cities, and there was even an accompanying website. Best of all, the hoax edition included fake corrections. The front page:

(Here’s my Columbia Journalism Review online column about the hoax corrections.)

That’s it for this year’s edition. If you want to read all of the notable errors and corrections that didn’t make it into the Crunks, you can use this link to read everything that was tagged for consideration.

*Correction Dec. 16: The headline on this section initially used “herpies” instead of “herpes.” Thanks to awardee David Hummerston for righting my wrong.

**Correction Dec. 16: This sentence initially left off the “New” in “New Hampshire.” Thanks to patrickcars for spotting it.

January

The Weekly Standard apologized after it discovered that a December 2007 article by David Satter included several passages from articles published in the Eurasia Daily Monitor. Link

The Sunday Times (UK) “inadvertently” plagiarized content from Radar magazine. Link

The new sex columnist for the New York Press resigned after her first column included questions taken from Dan Savage’s syndicated sex column. Link

February

After work submitted by a contributor was found to have included plagiarized material, the Brown Daily Herald conducted a review and discovered “two [additional] articles … that contained passages similar or identical to those in other publications.” Link

An article in the Miami Herald contained passages taken from an article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Link

The New York Times published an Editors’ Note that revealed a paragraph contained in a front page article about Argentina was taken from the Miami Herald. Slate’s Jack Shafer discovered the theft. Link

The Ventura County Star fired its surfing columnist after it discovered that two of his columns contained plagiarized material. Link

Award-winning photographer Liu Wei-qiang admitted to faking a widely-published photograph that showed a herd of endangered Tibetan antelopes near a passing train on the controversial Qinghai-Tibet railway. Link

March

Timothy S. Goeglein, a White House aide responsible for working with conservative and Christian groups, was revealed to have repeatedly plagiarized in his guest column for the News-Sentinel. Link

The same New York Times writer that plagiarized in a February front page article was once again caught plagiarizing. Link

The New York Times published an Editors’ Note after an article included passages from a story published on City Hall, a website. Link

The Sunday News published an op-ed by a member of the community that turned out to have been largely plagiarized from work by a professor at Cornell University. Link

From a New York Times Editors’ Note: “The Books of The Times review in The Arts on Feb. 26 and an article in House & Home on Thursday described the experiences of Margaret B. Jones, who said that she had been a foster child and gang member in South Central Los Angeles and survived to write a book about that life. “Margaret B. Jones” turned out to be a pseudonym, and her story a complete fabrication, as The Times reported on Tuesday.” Link

German newspaper Der Spiegel issued a retraction for an article that claimed IKEA had a habit of naming inexpensive items after Danish towns. (High end items were named after Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian towns.) The story was based on a report in Nyhedsavisen, a Danish newspaper, that turned out to have been fabricated. Link

April

An Ottawa Citizen editor’s note admitted the paper published quotes that had been “incorrectly attributed” to an expert at the Brookings Institution, and that the quotes “do not reflect his actual views.” The note did not explain the origin of the quotes, or how they ended up in the paper. Were the quotes fabricated? Plagiarized from another source? We’ll never know. Link

May

As was the case last year, a winning poem in the Washington Post’s kids poetry contest turned out to have been plagiarized. Link

Because of an example of photographic plagiarism, CablePulse24* was ordered by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council to air a statement admitting it breached broadcast standards. Link

A freelance art critic whose work had appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Stranger was exposed as a plagiarist. Link

June

The Vancouver Province canceled the column of a radio personality after it was revealed he had plagiarized from a Sports Illustrated column by Rick Reilly. Link

A contributor to Web Worker Daily was fired after he stole a post from MakeUseOf.com. Link

July

A sports writer for the The Daily Herald plagiarized from a column by, yup, Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated. Link

For many years, the Mainichi Daily News, the English website of Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun, was the place to go if you wanted to read unbelievably salacious articles about the sexual habits of the Japanese. This year, the site admitted many of its stories had been made up. After an internal investigation, the paper issued an apology and announced that the website would “start over again.” Link

August

In the worst case of plagiarism in recent memory, Slate writer Jody Rosen revealed that the Bulletin, a weekly paper in Texas, was regularly plagiarizing from a variety of other media sources. After Rosen’s article was published, the Bulletin was shut down. Link

September, October, November

None!

December

Rogers Sportsnet, a sports channel and website in Canada, fired NFL columnist and on air commentator Chris Landry after it was discovered he had repeatedly plagiarized from columns by Mike Lombardi and Andrew Brandt of NationalFootballPost.com. Link

*Correction October 23, 2009: The correct name of the station is CablePulse24. This article incorrectly referred to it as CablePlus24. Thanks, Emily!

Trends of Note

Obama Errors
Barack Obama appears to be a magnet for press errors.
He was mistaken for “Osama” in two (1,2) news reports by CNN, and in one by the New York Post. Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle once referred to him as a Republican, and the Hartford Courant has misspelled his first name on six different occasions dating back to 2004, with two of those instances occurring this year.
There was also an unfortunate typo in the New York Times that may have led some readers to think the Obamas have a rocky marriage:

A front-page article yesterday about the role that Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, is playing in his presidential campaign rendered incorrectly a word in a quotation from Valerie Jarrett, a friend of the Obamas who commented on their decision that he would run. She said in a telephone interview, “Barack and Michelle thought long and hard about this decision before they made it“ not that they “fought” long and hard.

And this from the Boston Globe:

Clarification: A story in yesterday’s Nation pages about Mitt Romney mixing up Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden said that Fox News Channel president Roger Ailes had previously used the similarity between the names Osama and Obama to mock the senator. Fox News says Ailes was making a joke aimed at President Bush, not Obama, when Ailes said in a speech to broadcast executives in March: “And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don’t know if it’s true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, “Why can’t we catch this guy?”

Lord help us if he gets the nomination. (Image: FishBowlNY)

Trouble in the Student Press
This year saw a rise in the number of instances of plagiarism at US student newspapers compared to previous years. The full details are revealed in the 2007 Plagiarism/Fabrication Round-Up. Let’s hope this was just an off year.

Mistaken for Terrorists
We once again saw a high number of instances in which people with Middle Eastern-sounding names were mistakenly labeled terrorists. This primarily occurred in UK publications. There were several cases of mistaken photo identification, while others were outright false accusations. One of the worst saw Metro UK run a photo of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed and identify him as terror suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed*. Links: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

Correction of the Year
One of the surest ways to produce a great correction is to write a scandalous article filled with salacious, untrue allegations. This year’s winner is a correction to an April article in the Independent Saturday (UK) magazine:

Following the portrait of Tony and Cherie Blair published on 21 April in the Independent Saturday magazine, Ms Blair’s representatives have told us that she was friendly with but never had a relationship with Carole Caplin of the type suggested in the article. They want to make it clear, which we are happy to do, that Ms Blair “has never shared a shower with Ms Caplin, was not introduced to spirit guides or primal wrestling by Ms Caplin (or anyone else), and did not have her diary masterminded by Ms Caplin.”

Runner Up
The Sentinel-Review (Woodstock, Ontario):

In an article in Monday’s newspaper, there may have been a misperception about why a Woodstock man is going to Afghanistan on a voluntary mission. Kevin DeClark is going to Afghanistan to gain life experience to become a police officer when he returns, not to shoot guns and blow things up.
The Sentinel-Review apologizes for any embarrassment this may have caused.

Other Favorites
Slate:

In the May 25 “Explainer,” Michelle Tsai asserted that an eight ball is about 10 lines of cocaine. While the size of a line depends on personal preference, most users would divide an eight ball into more than 25 lines.

The New York Times:

The Executive Pursuits column in Business Day on May 5, about selling hot dogs at Shea Stadium, misinterpreted a survey by the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council and referred incorrectly to hot dog sales at Shea. Although the stadium sells an average of just under 20,000 hot dogs a game, and ranks No. 1 among major league ballparks who responded to the questionnaire from the hot dog council, Shea does not lead all ballparks in sales. It trails Yankee Stadium, which sells about 30,000 a game but did not answer the survey. (A reader raised the issue after an article on May 11 about the introduction of Latin food at Yankee Stadium mentioned the higher figure for the Yankees. Unfortunately for the reader, who vowed not to “consume any dogs at either stadium until it has been settled,” this correction was delayed for research, but the Mets have a home game tomorrow night.)

The Daily Herald Tribune (Grande Prairie, Alberta)**:

An error occurred in the story “Weather Blamed in Death,” which appeared in Wednesday’s edition.
In the story, it’s stated that the “Oasis shelter is the one in the city that accepts people.”
The sentence should have read “The Oasis shelter is the only one in the city that accepts intoxicated people.” We apologize for the error.

New York Daily News:

A HEADLINE in Monday’s Daily News, “He regrets his role in ‘postal’ vid,” implied that Richard Marino, the subject of a YouTube video, was sorry for an incident in December at a Brooklyn post office. Marino, in fact, is not sorry. The News regrets the error.

Error of the Year: The Russian Titanic
It wasn’t the most catastrophic error, but it speaks to two larger issues, one good and one bad.
In early August, the state-owned Russian TV network Rossiya (RTR) used a rather striking image of a submarine to illustrate a story about a Russian voyage to the Arctic.
After the story aired, the image was then distributed by Reuters, which meant that it spread to news outlets in countries around the world. It was also used by NBC Nightly News.
Then, days later, reports emerged that RTR’s image was in fact taken from the hit film Titanic.
So who was the first to discover this? Another media outlet? A submarine expert?
A 13-year-old boy in Finland.
“I was looking at the photo of the Russian sub expedition and I noticed immediately that there was something familiar about the picture,” Waltteri Seretin, the boy told a Finnish paper. “I checked it with my DVD and there it was right there in the beginning of the movie: exactly the same image of the submersibles approaching the ship.”
Reuters and MSNBC.com ran corrections, and NBC Nightly News also made a rare on-air correction.
The first important issue related to this story is obvious: the images were re-distributed without the necessary verification. We regularly see specious stories spread at a surprising rate because many outlets will simply re-report a story if it has already made its way into the press. In the age of the Internet, stories move farther***, faster than ever before. So the act of verification is even more important.
The second issue relates to how the truth came out. Just as the Internet can send errors careening out into the information stream, it can also offer the opportunity for a 13-year-old boy in Finland to help correct them.
We will undoubtedly see more of both issues. Background

Typo of the Year
The Houston Chronicle, like just about every other North American media outlet, spent a lot of time reporting on Anna Nicole Smith this past year. In attempting to explain her, um, humble origins, the paper gave itself a measure of comeuppance. And that’s what makes it the typo of the year.

A photo caption in the paper read:

“When Redding, a longtime scout for Playboy, discovered Smith, the model could barely right a sentence…”

Who’s illiterate now?

Runner Up
Reuters, the reigning back-to-back champ in this category, didn’t win but did come in second place by calling the Muttahida Quami Movement the “Muttonhead Quail Movement.”

Other Favorites
Los Angeles Times:

Mexico City newspaper: An article in Wednesday’s Calendar section about an English-language newspaper in Mexico City referred to the many U.S. ex-patriots who live there. It should have said expatriates.

The New York Times:

A caption on Saturday with a picture showing a Pakistani man on his bicycle carrying a painting of his son, who he says was abducted by Pakistani intelligence agents in 2001, misspelled the name of the Pakistani capital. It is Islamabad, not Islambad.

The New York Times:

A picture caption on Wednesday with an article about a meeting between the leaders of North Korea and South Korea misspelled the name of the North Korean capital, where the meeting was held. It is Pyongyang, not Pongyang.

Sunday Star-Times (New Zealand):

OUR STORY on the price of tomatoes last week misquoted Alistair Petrie, general manager of Turners and Growers. Discussing the price of tomatoes Petrie was talking about retail rate not retail rape. We apologise for the misunderstanding.

The Guardian:

Australian cricketer Don Bradman was carried, not curried, off the field during the Ashes series in August 1938 (Heroic Hutton leads England to 903, page 12, the archive, November 6).

The Guardian:

In They live by night, page 4, G2 August 27, we wrote about a man who beat bats to death with a dingy paddle; we meant dinghy paddle.

Apology of the Year
Sunday Times (UK):

An article about Lord Lambton (“Lord Louche, sex king of Chiantishire”, News Review, January 7) falsely stated that his son Ned (now Lord Durham) and daughter Catherine held a party at Lord Lambton’s villa, Cetinale, in 1997, which degenerated into such an orgy that Lord Lambton banned them from Cetinale for years. In fact, Lord Durham does not have a sister called Catherine (that is the name of his former wife), there has not been any orgiastic party of any kind and Lord Lambton did not ban him (or Catherine) from Cetinale at all. We apologise sincerely to Lord Durham for the hurt and embarrassment caused.

Other Favorites
Daily Telegraph (UK):

APOLOGY: In Friday’s article on Liz Hurley’s wedding it was wrongly stated that the actress is holding a pheasant shoot on the Sunday after the ceremony. Game shooting is of course illegal on Sundays and the pheasant season ended on Feb 1. We apologise for the error and accept that if any shooting is to be done it will be by the paparazzi, who have no season and do not observe the Sabbath.

The Australian:

On December 22, 2006, The Australian published an article on page 28 titled, “Coffa backs measures to restore order”.
In it, The Australian incorrectly stated that Ms Van Tienen had been found guilty by the Australian Sport Anti-Doping Authority of trafficking drugs and banned from participating in weightlifting for two years. Ms Van Tienen has never been charged or convicted of drug offences, has never been banned from the sport, nor has she ever been involved in an organised drug ring. The Australian apologises unreservedly for any hurt or embarrassment caused to Ms Van Tienen by the publication.

The Guardian:

In a report about the Scottish elections, an editing error led to us wrongly suggesting that John Swinburne of the Scottish Senior Citizens’ Unity Party had been accused of allegedly causing a breach of the peace by running amok in a polling station with a golf club (Recrimination follows chaos over new Scots voting procedures, page 5, May 5). We apologise to Mr Swinburne for any embarrassment or distress caused.

The Mirror (UK):

May 6 under the headline “Grease chiefs hit by pounds 8k Gest list” we said that David Gest had made a string of backstage demands before agreeing to appear on the show including a DVD of himself being played in his dressing room together with various refreshments served at specific temperatures and chauffeur-driven cars for his friends. In fact, David did not make any of these demands which, we have now discovered, were circulated as a hoax by an unknown person and we apologise to David Gest for publishing them.

The Mirror (UK):

On 16 April we reported on an interview given by Bryan Ferry to a German newspaper. Our article was headed “The Nazis were so amazing” and claimed that Mr Ferry had been “singing the praises of the Nazis”. We now accept this was not true.
In fact, Mr Ferry had spoken only of his admiration from an artistic point of view for some aspects of German art, architecture and presentation which were associated with the Nazi regime. He made no mention of the Nazi regime nor did he use the word “Nazi”. We accept that Mr Ferry abhors the Nazi regime and all it stood for.
We apologise to Mr Ferry for the offence caused by our report and are happy to set the record straight.

The Times (UK):

We were wrong to say in our headlines (yesterday, front page and page 4) that the report of Judge Rupert Bursell QC into a complaint of drunkenness against Dr Tom Butler, the Bishop of Southwark, had concluded that Dr Butler was drunk.
Judge Bursell did not hear any evidence or reach any conclusions as to the truth of the complaint. We apologise to Dr Butler for the distress and embarrassment this must have caused him.

The Daily Express (UK):

ON April 3 we published an article entitled “The hangers-on who are dragging Prince Harry into the gutter” which was accompanied by a photograph of a young woman we identified as Annabel Ritchie. We now accept that the young woman photographed was not Annabel Ritchie.
We also accept that Annabel Ritchie is not part of any so called “hangers-on”.
We apologise unreservedly to Annabel Ritchie for what we published about her.

Northern Territory News (Australia):

WE would like to make clear in respect of our article in our August 8 edition headlined “Salvos accused of abusive treatment” that:
THE reported comments of the Victorian lawyer in respect of children being used in experimental drug trials and being tortured relate to other cases in Victoria, and not the Salvation Army’s institutions;
THE Salvation Army has never condoned the torture or physical or sexual abuse of children; and MS Shield’s reported comments that it: “… was time for things to be brought out in the open” ought not be taken to infer that the Salvation Army does not deal with the complaints of Ms Shields or any other complainants of past abuse, other than in a transparent and non-adversarial way.

Best Photo Error
Jornal do Brasil, a newspaper in Brazil, mistook a photograph taken during a film shoot and subsequently posted on the Orkut social networking website for a real image of drug traffickers in action. It promoted the image on its front page under the headline, “Drug traffic shows its firepower on Orkut.”
The accompanying story said the photo “demonstrates the shameless audacity of the traffickers on Orkut. Twelve young people armed with rifles, machine guns and pistols show off for the camera on the hilltop. There is even a woman in the group.” Link

Runner Up
The Ottawa Citizen had a bad year with photo misidentifications. In May, it ran a major story on the front of its City section stating that a man had been convicted for a fourth time of sexually assaulting a minor. At the center of the above-fold story was a picture of the accused. Unfortunately, it showed a man who had the misfortune of bearing a name similar to that of the convicted pedophile. The paper also made a similarly bad photo misidentification in January when it mistakenly identified a murder victim’s son as the accused. Link

Other Favorites
The Miami Herald:

In an article on drug smuggling in Venezuela that began on Page 1A Monday, an incorrect photograph was used on Page 2A for jailed drug trafficking suspect Feris Farid Domínguez. The error occurred in the newsroom production process. The photo that was used was that of Leonel Fernández, president of the Dominican Republic. The Miami Herald regrets the error…

Portland Press Herald:

A story on Page B4 on Wednesday about foraging for edible mushrooms contained a photo of amanita muscaria, which is a poisonous and hallucinogenic mushroom. It was a copy editor’s error.

Daily Express (UK):

On Saturday, February 3, we published a photograph captioned as Davina Smith, above, who was jailed for causing death by careless driving. In fact, the photograph was of Marina Gray, the mother of one of the victims. We sincerely apologise for any distress and embarrassment caused to Mrs Gray and her family.

Daily Mail (UK):

In an article of 6 November 2007 about Tom Sykes, a freelance journalist, we mistakenly included a photograph of Tom Sykes a digital TV consultant and his family. We wish to make it clear that the latter is not a recovering alcoholic or drug addict, and apologise for the error.

Best Hoax
In November, the Associated Press picked up a story from the World Entertainment News Network that reported Paris Hilton was in India advocating on behalf of drunken elephants.
“The elephants get drunk all the time,” she said. “It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them.”
Like, totally. Except the tale was totally false. WENN later said it picked up the story from the Daily Star, a UK tabloid. AP had put in a call to a Hilton spokesperson, but didn’t wait to hear back before putting out its version.
When contacted by the New York Times, the AP entertainment editor said, “The irony in the story was obvious. But it doesn’t change the fact that you have to verify it. This time we didn’t, and we got burned.”

Two More
In May, the Fresno Bee had to admit it was taken in by a tale of a “fat, blind goldfish rescued off a lawn and reunited with his owner.”

Also in May, reports circulated that Yoko Ono tasted dog meat while on a radio show. The resulting apology from the Sun (UK):

Our May 30 story headed “Uuurrgh! My Corgi kebab is a bit ruff” said that Yoko Ono was on a radio show and “tasted” dog meat which was being eaten by an animal rights activist.
The report, which was filed to us by several leading press agencies was wholly wrong and Ms Ono did not appear or take part in the show.
We sincerely apologise to Ms Ono for the offence and distress caused to her.

Most Delayed Correction
The New York Times:

A caption on June 8, 1944, with a photograph of Army officers at mess on the Pacific front, misspelled the given name of the first officer seated at the left side of the table. He was Col. Girard B. Troland of New London, Conn. – not Gerand. The error was called to the attention of the editors by his grandson yesterday.

Best Error About Error
The New York Times:

A headline on a report in The Caucus roundup yesterday, about The New York Post’s error in reporting that Senator John Kerry had chosen Richard A. Gephardt as his running mate in 2004, misstated the famous headline in The Chicago Daily Tribune in 1948 when the paper declared the wrong winner in the presidential race. The headline was “Dewey Defeats Truman,” not “Dewey Beats Truman.”

The Getting Ahead of the Story Award
The Mississauga News:

A story posted earlier today on mississauga.com contained incorrect information about a traffic jam on the Queen Elizabeth Way in Mississauga.
It was a multi-vehicle crash on the QEW at Dixie Rd. that brought traffic to a standstill.
We incorrectly blamed the traffic back-up on a civil protest involving hundreds of Caledonia residents.
In fact, the protest is scheduled for tomorrow morning.
The News regrets the error.

The Didn’t Get the Joke Award
Syndicated columnist Susan Estrich had trouble distinguishing between satire and reporting, and the result was that she took a joke quote from Wonkette and used it in her column. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post recounted the tale:

…Picking up on a zinger that John McCain had delivered to his presidential rival, Estrich, who managed Michael Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign, found a retort online from the Romney camp. She wrote:
“Besides, who is McCain to talk? ‘Why don’t you go cry about torture some more, old man,’ Romney’s spokesman is quoted as saying in response. ‘When we’re in charge, we’re going to nonlethally stress the hell out of you in Gitmo #15.’” “‘Old man’?” she wrote. “Ouch. Accusing a man who spent years in a North Vietnam prison of ‘cry[ing]about torture’ and threatening to ‘stress the hell’ out of him?”
When the column was sent out, an editor at Michigan’s Lansing State Journal, Derek Melot, thought the quote was so outrageous that he wondered why he hadn’t heard it before. After an online search, he found that it had come from the satirical Web site Wonkette — and was completely invented. Creators Syndicate, which handles Estrich’s column, quickly sent out a “mandatory correction,” and the gaffe apparently never got into print.
Estrich, who teaches law at the University of Southern California, says she thought of attributing the quote to Wonkette but figured many readers would be unfamiliar with the site. She says she used the formulation “is quoted as saying” because “I worry about this all the time when I rely on secondary sources….
“I guess I shouldn’t consider Wonkette to be ‘reporting,’ but that’s the problem in our brave new world. Where I come from, there’s a problem with making up quotes and attributing them to campaign spokesmen, but I guess that’s very old-fashioned of me.”
Double-checking material from humor sites is also an old-fashioned virtue…

Best Abuse of Maps
The Los Angeles Times:

Fire hazard graphic: A map in Thursday’s California section showing fire hazard zones across the state and the Southland had the colors for the highest and lowest hazard levels reversed. In that map, red areas actually represented “moderate” hazard, not “very high,” and the yellow areas represented “very high,” not “moderate.” Also, an accompanying chart should have indicated that the acreage listed was in thousands. A map with corrected shading is posted on The Times website at: \o7latimes.com/firehazard\f7. The fire hazard level of individual properties can be viewed on the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection website at: firecenter.berkeley.edu/fhsz/.

Outstanding Achievement in Misspelling
The New York Times:

An obituary on July 21 of Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, who marketed memorabilia and toys based on A. A. Milne’s children’s books about Winnie the Pooh, misspelled the name of the department store that agreed to let her set up Pooh Corners for children. It is Neiman Marcus, not Nieman Marcus. (The Times has misspelled the company’s name in at least 195 articles since 1930.)

The New York Times:

An article on Saturday about fund-raising efforts in New York by Senator Barack Obama misspelled the surname of one of President John F. Kennedy’s closest advisers, who introduced Mr. Obama at a fund-raiser. He is Theodore C. Sorensen, not Sorenson. (Go to Article) The error also appeared in an article in The Arts on Feb. 22 about books written by candidates, including “Profiles in Courage,” which then-Senator Kennedy wrote with guidance from Mr. Sorensen. (The Times has misspelled Mr. Sorensen’s surname more than 135 times in headlines and articles during the 50-plus years he has been a Democratic adviser and well-known author.)

The Language Awards
New York Times Book Review:

If readers of the Book Review have been considering picking up a little conversational Hindi, they would probably do well to not begin with the sample list of words in the Jan. 7 review of “Sacred Games,” a novel by Vikram Chandra that sprinkles untranslated Hindi throughout its English text. Indian readers pointed out that while most of the Hindi terms in the review were innocuous, several were in fact obscene – suitable for Chandra’s tough-guy characters, no doubt, but not for the Book Review, where editors failed to check the meaning of the words in the novel’s glossary.

Chicago Tribune:

An item in the Sunday Magazine referred to a popular but unfounded notion that Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, in this case 40. The item failed to note that the assertion has been debunked by linguists and others.

Best Meta Correction
The Guardian:

We misspelled the word misspelled twice, as mispelled, in the Corrections and clarifications column on September 26, page 30.

Most Useless Correction
The Irish Examiner:

No test samples were sent to Cork University Hospital.

…and that’s all we’re telling you.

Most Puzzling Correction
The New Scientist:

Several readers complain that the dancing cow illustrating Feedback, 20 January, appears to have six teats. It was of course drawn as seen by an intoxicated fellow dancer.

Best Porn Error
A report from the Guardian:

A cable television company has apologised to customers after accidentally broadcasting a pornography channel instead of the scheduled BBC programmes.
Smallworld viewers in Scotland, who had been watching Life on Mars, were waiting for the Ten O’Clock News but were shocked to see sexually explicit images on their screens, while BBC2 viewers were confronted with X-rated footage instead of Jeremy Paxman and Newsnight.
The Ayrshire-based cable firm mistakenly aired the pornographic content, from adult channel Climax 3, to customers for two hours until the mix-up was discovered at midnight and the plug pulled on the offending material…

Other Favorites
Monterey County Herald:

Monterey X-rated movie director Inkyo Volt Hwang’s nickname was Wanker Wang. An article on page A1 Saturday misspelled the nickname.

The Australian:

AN article in the IT Business section of The Australian on February 13 (“Sex rears its head in DVD standards”, Page 6) was illustrated by a photograph. Readers should note that the photograph was of an actress performing in Debbie Does Dallas — the Musical, a satire of the 1970s pornographic film of the same name, and the actress has no connection with the adult entertainment industry. The Australian apologizes for any embarrassment the publication may have caused.

Best Correction with Things Left Unexplained
The Intelligencer Journal:

A photograph accompanying a story about Teen Challenge in Saturday’s Intelligencer Journal incorrectly identified the subject, who is the Rev. James Santiago.
The story included an incorrect identification of Santiago’s wife, Pam. Also, Santiago was addicted to crack cocaine for 12 years.

Best Recipe Error
The Observer (UK):

We should clarify that the stir-fried morning glory recipe featured in Observer Food Monthly last week uses an edible morning glory Ipomoea aquatica, found in south east Asia and also known as water spinach. This should not to be confused with the UK Ipomoea, also known as morning glory, which is poisonous.

Runner Up
The Advocate (Louisiana):

Oops! Check servings for crawfish boil
Mary Nola and Glenn Sotile know their crawfish eating friends. When they read Dr. Charlie Daniel’s Boiled Crawfish recipe in the “Alphabet Soup” column April 19, they said something was wrong.
The recipe, which called for a 40- to 45-pound sack of crawfish, was listed as serving a crowd of 50 to 60. Sotile said “maybe the crowd is small children or New York City residents.”
Actually, columnist Stephanie Riegel explained, the recipe should have said “Serves 12 to 15.” For the crowd of 50 to 60, the recipe would need to be tripled if part of the group includes children, or quadrupled if the crowd is made up of the “60 hungry south Louisianians” Sotile sees at the crawfish boils he attends…

Best Jargon
The Washington Post:

Army Spec. Hugo Gonzalez was misidentified in two photo captions with the Oct. 1 installment of the Left of Boom series, and his rank was incorrect on Page One. Also, in some editions of the Oct. 2 installment of the series, the full name of an EFP, a type of weapon used by insurgents, was incorrectly given as “explosively formed perpetrator.” It should have been “explosively formed penetrator.”

The Trouble at Home Award
The Daily Miner and News (Kenora, Ontario):

Last week’s editorial had a major error in it that I must correct. I referred to my new granddaughter as three and one-half YEARS old. It should have read MONTHS old. Boy am I in trouble.

Best Misquote
A letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald:

David Marr unfortunately misquoted me in “A fallen leader of faith” (August 4-5). I actually said that I endured the naked beatings, paternal bum caresses etc from Frank Houston, not enjoyed them. I can assure readers that the experience wasn’t pleasurable but painful, both at the time and for some years later.
Peter Laughton Carrara (Qld)

Runner Up
The Union Leader (Manchester, NH):

Due to a reporting error, a story on Page A2 in Saturday’s edition of the New Hampshire Union Leader misquoted University of New Hampshire employee Bernardine Schultz. She said Professor John Collins was prone to giving students “easy A’s,” not that he had “lazy aides.”

Best Misattribution:
Austin American-Statesman:

A Newsmakers item on Page A2 Sunday incorrectly attributed a quote to the Rev. Al Sharpton. The item should have said that nationally syndicated radio host Don Imus described Rutgers’ women’s basketball players as “nappy-headed hos” during a segment of his show Wednesday.

Runner Up
The Daily Telegraph (Australia):

Magistrate David Hellpern
IN an article headed “30 beers and still driving”, published in The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, Magistrate David Hellpern was quoted as saying to the defendant Rowan Davidson: “You were behaving like a jerk and you were smashed for it.”
In fact, those words were contained in a submission to the court and the magistrate was simply reading them. The error is regretted.

Most Puzzling Retraction
Details magazine published this Editor’s Note this year.

The Note basically stated that two quotes attributed to Ben Affleck in a profile were fabricated. Obviously, that’s quite serious.
But a publicist for the magazine then told the New York Observer’s website that, “the quote in the story – written by freelancer Bart Blasengame – was actually accurate.” She said they were “taken out of context.”
The Editor’s Note was wrong then, right? Well, no.
“I stand by the correction that I published, and I stand by the statements made on behalf of me and Details,” editor Dan Peres later said in an article in the print edition of the Observer.
Ah, so “nothing was… fabricated,” and yet Affleck never “made such a statement.”
Thanks, that clears everything up. Link (Image: Gawker)

Most Calculated Correction
Salon:

The Nov. 12 article “Public Bathroom Dilemma: Paper or Air?” misstated how much energy is consumed by hand dryers. The corrected story now says that “5.7 million kilowatt-hours of electricity [are] used every day – enough power to run an estimated 197,000 homes a day.” The following explains how author Rebecca Clarren reached the new calculation. Watts are an expression of energy per unit of time, namely 1 joule per second. A kilowatt-hour (kWh) is not a standard unit in any formal system, but is commonly used in electrical applications as a measure of energy use and is used by power companies. Since 1 kWh = 3,600,000 joules, to get the correct calculation (now reflected in the original story), Clarren multiplied the average hand dryer’s wattage, 2.3 kWh, by 0.0083 (how long a second is expressed in hours), and came up with 0.019 kWh. Then she multiplied that by the 3 million hand dryers that exist nationwide, X 100 uses per day, and came up with a total of 5.7 million kWh used by hand dryers every day. Based on the latest figures from the Energy Information Administration, the average household uses 10,654 kWh a year, or 29.19 kWh a day. Therefore, 5.7 million kWh divided by 29.19 kWh a day in home(s) equals approximately 197,000 homes a day. Also, the story now contains an updated link to the comparison of paper towels and hand dryers that the Climate Conservancy did for Salon.

This correction inspired a math debate by Regret readers, some of whom suggested the calculations were incorrect. Read the thread here.

Best Numerical Error
The Hindu****:

A report “From Bombay to Rajasthan” (“Newscape” page, January 8, 2007) stated that actor Elizabeth Hurley will wear “a 4,000-pound sari by designer Tarun Tahiliani” during her wedding in March. While one reader wondered how she would be able to lift the 1,800 kg sari, another reader said there are possible fears about the bride being reduced to pulp by its weight. It was an error. The word “pound” was used instead of the currency symbol for pound sterling (£).

Other Favorites
Toronto Star:

A Nov. 19 article about a new study indicating that Detroit is the most dangerous U.S. city incorrectly stated that Detroit has seen nearly one million people killed since 1950.
In fact, that number represents the overall decline in Detroit’s population since 1950, not the number of people killed.
The Star regrets the error.

The Mirror (UK):

ALTHOUGH Kingston, Jamaica, has the third-highest murder rate in the world, it has not had anything like 15,000 murders per year. There were 1,445 murders in the whole of Jamaica in 2004 (Page 9, March 24).

The Guardian:

We wrongly converted a baby’s birth weight of 8lbs 15oz as 51kg. It is 4.1kg (Losing it, page 13, G2, January 1). A 51kg baby is an impossible 112lbs 6oz.

Why People Don’t Like Talking to Reporters
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

For a short time, Hurricane Katrina survivor and chef LeRoy Crump Jr. operated a kitchen in a bar in a drug-infested area of Clarksburg, W.Va., before opening his current restaurant, Lagniappe, in the city. A story published on Sept. 2, 2007 about his life post-Katrina incorrectly said the bar was a haven for drugs.

To the Dearly (not) Departed
We call it “obiticide” – death by media. What follows are some of the people prematurely declared dead by the press this year.

International Herald Tribune:

An article in some copies Monday erroneously included President Vladimir Putin among major Russian figures who died recently.

Toronto Star:

Wednesday’s story about Canada’s Walk of Fame inductees incorrectly referred to “the late Morley Safer.” Safer is alive and continues to file stories as a 60 Minutes correspondent. The Star regrets the error.

Los Angeles Times:

Joss Stone: An article in Tuesday’s Calendar section on British singer Joss Stone referred to musician and DJ Johnny Otis as “the late bandleader.” Otis is 85 and living in Northern California. The article also described songwriter-producer Lamont Dozier as a “Philly soul icon.” Dozier was a key member of the Motown Records hit-making team in Detroit.

Washington Post:

A Feb. 12 Metro article incorrectly reported that the parents of a teenager killed Saturday while fleeing D.C. police are deceased. Both parents of Kevin Thomas, 17, are alive.

Los Angeles Times:

Pelosi’s celebration: An article in Section A on Thursday about new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) referred to “the late” Rep. Lindy Boggs. Boggs is alive.

Bloomfield Free Press:

Mark Twain once said, “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” In this week’s edition of the Bloomfield Free Press, we mistakenly listed former body shop owner Earl Haywood as being deceased.
After speaking with Mr. Haywood on the telephone this afternoon, it is obvious that he is anything but. The Bloomfield Free Press mistakenly confused him with another Earl Haywood – a former Bloomfield Town Councilman – who passed away last summer. Our apologies, and the wishes that Mr. Haywood is with us for years to come.

The Victims
Take a moment to reflect upon the many people who suffer every year at the hands of press errors. Some examples are below.

Newsday:

A story Friday about Iona basketball coach Jeff Ruland’s past hardships should not have included a reference to a “battle for sobriety.” He has faced the loss of his father at age 9 and an NBA career shortened by injuries, but his sobriety has not been questioned.

The Mirror (UK)

BIG Brother’s Carole is a sexual health worker, not a sex worker, which usually means something rather different (Page 33, July 13).

Chicago Tribune:

A Dec. 31 story on the Q section’s Health page about a dentist whose research shows that brushing with toothpaste can harm teeth said the dentist does not brush his teeth. Dentist John Dzakovich says he does brush his teeth but with mouthwash. His belief is that it is the toothpaste, not the brush, that causes damage.

Fashion magazine (Canada):

OOPS: “Booming Bangkok” (October 2006) incorrectly stated that Gene Futon is a former prostitute. We apologize for the error.

Fond Farewell: Ian Mayes
Ian Mayes retired in March of this year after serving as the reader’s editor of the Guardian for a decade.
As reported by the Press Gazette, during that time Mayes dealt with “90,000 complaints, 14,000 corrections, countless phone calls from abusive readers and two months in physiotherapy due to work-induced repetitive strain injury…”
But his tenure was about more than quantity (and suffering). Mayes was one of the, if not the, premier corrections artistes.***** Using very few words, he often turned a simple correction into something amusing or enlightening. In the process, he made the paper’s corrections more than just a recitation of error.
We thank him for his service and offer these few samples of his work from previous years:

In a misplaced outbreak of politeness, the Weatherwatch column, page 39, November 1, described average temperatures in Tromso and Bergen as being “0C and 3C respectfully”.

We spelt Morecambe, the town in Lancashire, wrong again on page 2, G2, yesterday. We often do.
In an item, Millionaires at sea, about Who Wants to be a Millionaire Live, at a theatre in Eastbourne, page 10, G2, yesterday, we note the ignorance of some of the contestants and say: Another doesn’t know that heuvos fritos is Spanish for fried eggs. It isn’t, but huevos fritos is.

We referred to the £250,000 advance for Vikram Seth’s prize-winning novel, “A Suitable Buy.” Although undoubtedly worth every penny, the book is actually called “A Suitable Boy.”

Finally, a request. As you can see, this site does not accept advertising or donations. (Update: Google ads were added in 2009.) It’s a one-man operation, and that one man recently wrote a book about media errors, accuracy and corrections. It includes the kind of amusing content you’ve just enjoyed, and also delves into the history of accuracy in the press, along with many other important and enlightening topics. If you’ve enjoyed this article, please consider purchasing a copy of the Regret the Error book. You can learn more about the book and read some reviews here.

Thanks for visiting.

*Correction: We initially (and incorrectly referred to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed. Thanks, Corey.
**Correction: We initially (and incorrectly) referred to this paper as being based in Grand Prairie, rather than the correct Grande Prairie. Thanks, Billy.
***Correction: We initially (and incorrectly) used the word “father” in this sentence: “Internet, stories move farther, faster than ever before.” Thanks to Gerry and Jesse!
****Correction: We initially cited the source of this correction as the “Hindu Times.” It is in fact “The Hindu.” Thanks, TKN!
*****Correction: We initially (and incorrectly) used the word “premiere” in this sentence: “Mayes was one of the, if not the, premier corrections artistes.” Thanks, Allan!

January
A columnist and the administrative assistant to the editor at the San Antonio Express-News resigned after she was found plagiarizing from Wikipedia and other sources in three columns. Link

February
MSNBC.com removed a story how to sell a home in the slow winter season after it was discovered parts of it were plagiarized from an article on About.com. MSNBC did not the name the offender. Link

The Michigan Daily, a student newspaper, fired a writer after discovering plagiarism in four articles. The paper did not name the writer. Correction: The paper did name the writer.Link

March
The New York Times published an editor’s note after readers pointed out “a number of resemblances” between an essay in the Book Review and a passage in the book, “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader.” It was not definitively determined to be plagiarism. Link

The Boston Globe suspended a sports columnist for two months without pay after it was revealed he plagiarized from a story in the News Tribune of Tacoma, Wash. Link

The chief editorial writer of Yamanashi Nichinichi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, was fired after admitting he had plagiarized in at least 15 editorials. Link

The New York Times published a letter to the editor about Dick Cheney that was later revealed to have been almost entirely “copied from an article about Mr. Cheney and the trial from the previous day’s newspaper.” Link

April
CBS News fired a producer after she plagiarized from the Wall Street Journal for a video essay on “Couric & Co.,” the Katie Couric/group blog on the CBS News website. Though CBS did not name her, the NY Sun later did. Link, link

The Daily Pennsylvanian, a student newspaper, fired a columnist after one of her submissions “bore uncanny similarities to a Yahoo! Food piece from March.” Link

The Washington Post published this correction: “One of the poems that KidsPost published as part of its poetry contest on Tuesday was not written by the child who submitted it. The poem that appeared as “Who Am I?” was actually written by J. Patrick Lewis and published in his book “Monumental Verses.” The child who sent the poem to KidsPost said she didn’t realize that entries to the contest had to be original. But copying something that someone else wrote without giving them credit is plagiarism, and it’s wrong.” Link

May
The Times UK ran a correction after “Some portions of an article about Hollywood romantic comedies” were not “attributed to… a New York Daily News article on the same subject from January.” Joe Neumaier, the author of the News article wrote the Times to say he considered it to be a case of plagiarism. Link

Chilean magazine Cosas withdrew an issue from newsstands after Radar magazine accused it of plagiarism. The Radar article “Toxic Bachelors” was translated and reproduced in Cosas by the magazine’s New York correspondent. Link

June
None.

July
Japanese newspaper Shizuoka Shimbun apologized after a front-page story about the death of a former prime minister was revealed to have been plagiarized from Wikipedia. Link

August
A reporter for the Explorer, weekly paper in Arizona, was fired after they were found to have taken a story written for a journalism class and, with a few minor updates, passed it off as new work. Aside from the dishonesty, one of the problems was that the piece was outdated and therefore contained inaccurate information. The paper did not name the reporter. Link

The Guardian published a correction and offered an apology after “A short introduction to an article about Russian oligarchs included three paragraphs that were substantially similar to paragraphs contained in the introduction to another, earlier, article, published in May, in the Exile – an English-language newspaper based in Moscow.” Link

September
None.

October
A sports reporter at the News Leader in Staunton, Virginia, was fired on Tuesday after an internal investigation revealed she “fabricated at least four stories and plagiarized from other stories on the Internet.” Link

A sex columnist at the GW Hatchet, a student newspaper, was fired after a column he wrote “borrowed ideas” from a book and website. Link

November
A columnist at the Brown Daily Herald, a student newspaper, was fired after editors discovered that six of his columns included plagiarized material. The same writer also plagiarized in a letter to the editor that was published in the New York Times. Link

A professor at the Missouri School of Journalism lost his column in a university paper staffed by journalism students and faculty after admitting he committed “unintentional” plagiarism. Link

The San Antonio Express-News fired a longtime sports reporter after he plagiarized from www.bowl.com and www.pbatour.com. Many people took to the comments section of our post to protest his firing and question whether he had in fact plagiarized. Update April 28, 2010: Harry Page is not a plagiarist. Read more here.  Link

The Economist published a correction after a freelance writer in Uganda plagiarized from the Daily Monitor in Uganda and used the work in a piece for the magazine. Link

December
After four-and-a-half months of re-reporting, The New Republic retracted articles written by its Baghdad Diarist. Link

The National Review Online had to retract a story and clarify another after questions were raised about the veracity of the reporting, though the publication denied any fabrication occurred. Link

Dhia al-Kawaz, the editor of the Jordan-based Asawat al-Iraq news agency, admitted he fabricated the story that 11 members of his family had been killed in Iraq. In reality, one member was killed. Link

Did we miss any? Let us know.