Here’s a case study in how a story can spread far and wide, causing anger and frustration for the person at the heart of the tale. I became aware of it thanks to this rather vague correction in the Guardian: A Weekend magazine article about a woman who for part of her working life dresses [...]
I was a guest on last week’s edition of the WNYC program On The Media to discuss the Wall Street Journal’s scrubbing of its editorial about the attacks in Norway. Here’s their intro for the segment: In the wake of the Oslo attacks, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial blaming the violence on Islamic [...]
Karen Rothmyer, public editor of the Star of Nairobi, Kenya, dedicated a recent column to the issue of corrections. Specifically, the issue is that her paper seems to prefer to not publish them. It sometimes publishes a corrective article when a mistake is made, or it will occasionally go into online articles and scrub away [...]
New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane dedicated his most recent column to the issue of scrubbing and of version control. Specifically, he looks at a few examples where changes were made to reporting without the alterations being noted. In some cases, older versions of stories were disappeared from the Times website. I’ve written about [...]
Several places, including Gawker and the Atlantic Wire, took note of the fact that Fox News’ website removed a bizarre and borderline disturbing article that seemed to link an Obama speech with a young man’s suicide.* From the Atlantic Wire: Fox News has scrubbed its website of an article suggestively commenting on the coincidental suicide [...]
Columbia Journalism Review today released a major report about magazine websites. (Disclosure: I write a weekly column for CJR, but had no involvement in this report.) You can read a brief intro and download the full PDF here. The report includes some interesting information about fact checking, copy editing and corrections. The results are mixed, [...]
The Torontoist blog spotted this correction in the Toronto alt weekly Eye: Incorrect information was published in “O’Donnell-land” (cover story, April 9). Darren O’Donnell spent three days in Toronto General hospital, not three months. He has neither experienced nor has he been diagnosed with schizophrenia. EYE WEEKLY regrets the errors. Torontoist also notes that the [...]
Roughly three weeks ago, the website of Sports Illustrated reported that NFL draft prospect B.J. Raji had tested positive for marijuana at the NFL combine. The story was widely quoted but it also drew criticism, especially after Raji’s agent disputed the tale. Days later, SI scrubbed the story off its site. The FanHouse asked SI [...]
The Daily Targum, a student paper at Rutgers, last week published an editorial decrying a bill in North Dakota that would cause “a picture of a fertilized egg… [to be] considered child pornography.” As you can imagine, the bill in question had no such measure. The paper was fooled by a satirical article. The Targum [...]
Two recent columns by newspaper ombudsmen caught my eye. Kathy English, public editor of the Toronto Star, wrote her latest column about the paper’s policy regarding the “unpublishing” of articles. An excerpt: … Generally, the Star believes that unpublishing is a serious act as it erases the online history of the Star’s journalism. The Star’s [...]
This week’s edition of my Columbia Journalism Review Daily column is online here. Inspired by the example of Wales Online (background), I look at the issue of scrubbing. Here’s the opening of the column: Scrubbing Away Their Sins We used to be able to throw out the news; to disappear it. The morning paper would [...]
Earlier this morning, a story on the New York Daily News’ website reported that New York Rangers forward Sean Avery “was rushed to a Manhattan hospital Wednesday morning in cardiac arrest just hours after his team’s playoff loss.” The story also reported that Avery was “unconscious and not breathing.” The information was attributed to “sources” [...]
