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 as Charlotte Bronte contained factual inaccuracies. This article, with its related comments, has been removed from our website (Being Charlotte Bronte, 3 December, page 12).

Why would the paper remove the entire story? It’s rare to see the Guardian take this course of action. With a bit of digging, it became clear that the story was removed because the premise was false. The woman, Lyn-Marie Cunliffe, does not dress like Charlotte Bronte in the way portrayed in the story.

As a result of the incorrect reports, she has spent a lot of time fighting back against a series of press reports that presented her as someone who always dresses in period costume, is living in a “time warp”, and may also occasionally confuse herself with Ms. Bronte. (The Daily Mail ran a picture of Cunliffe in costume at McDonald’s. Lord know why she agreed to do that…)

Let’s sample some of the articles that are still online (the Daily Telegraph removed its piece).

From the Daily Express:

SHE is a 21st-century housewife with a husband and two grown-up children.
But Lyn-Marie Cunliffe spends every day dressed as her heroine – Victorian author Charlotte Bronte.
She doesn’t wear modern attire even when grabbing a bite in McDonald’s.
The 49-year-old harboured a lifelong obsession with the Jane Eyre author’s works before deciding three years ago she wanted to live in a time-warp.

The Daily Mail:

Many of us dream of wearing the beautiful costumes from period dramas like Downton Abbey… however few would go quite as far as donning them every day.
But romantic fiction-lover, Lyn-Marie Cunliffe, has taken her obsession with Victorian literature to the extreme – by living her modern life dressed as her heroine Charlotte Bronte.
The 49-year-old loves the 19th century author so much that she dresses like her all the time – even on trips to the supermarket.

And from the now-scrubbed Telegraph piece:

Lyn-Marie Cunliffe, 49, loves 19th century author Charlotte Bronte so much she dresses as the famous author all the time – even while doing her supermarket shopping. The mum-of-two dresses in the home-made smocks whilst doing the school run …

The story originated with the Caters News Agency, which seems to specialize in quirky and sensationalized accounts of real people. Here’s the lead of one of its recent stories:

A pretty student has made a mind-blowing recovery – after her head EXPLODED.Stunning Jade Lucas, 20, almost died when a huge cyst in her brain filled with fluid – and exploded when surgeons drilled open her skull to operate.

You can also have lots of fun scanning the headlines. A sample:

WOMAN WAS SCARED OF STAIRS
PREGNANT ROADKILL CRAVINGS
NAP TIME COULD KILL MY BABY
LETTUCE ADDICTION DIAGNOSIS

Lettuce addiction!

So perhaps Cunliffe should have done a little due diligence before agreeing to the interview. That said, she claims she was misled. This is from a subsequent report that detailed her outrage at the original story and those that followed:

She said she had been told the article would be about tourism and her business Abigails Ateliers. She said she had approved a different version of the story and had broken down in tears when she had read what was eventually printed.
“I have spent three years building up my business and now I am afraid it is ruined,” she said. “I spent a lot of time building up my online presence and now when you put my name in to a search engine there is a story about a crazy lady who thinks she is Charlotte Bronte.”

It’s pretty low if the agency promised approval on the story and then switched it out. Of course, it’s strange to offer approval in the first place…

Cunliffe has been blogging about her ordeal (see here, here and here, for example). She also spent a lot of time over the past week contacting newspapers and other outlets to get them to correct their errors. Some have been responsive, many have not. This has only added to her frustration.

Cunliffe eventually heard back from the journalist at Caters, who said it was the papers who took the tale to the extreme. Here’s what Cunliffe wrote:

Not only have Telegraph and Guardian both clearly stated it to be untrue but Caters the original source of the story has distanced itself from the two remaining stories.An email from Tammy Hughes of Caters who was the person who interviewed me has made clear that “any mistakes are the result of the newspapers themselves

So perhaps the agency distributed the version she had approved. It’s not exactly clear at what point the story morphed into “This wacky grandma dresses like Charlotte Bronte all the time. Watch her eat a hamburger in period costume!”

I’m sure the folks at Caters could come up with a much better line than that. In fact, you probably won’t be surprised to learn some of the offending papers got very punny with their headlines. The Mail: “Do you come Eyre often?” The Express: “The Full Bronte!”

Advice for Responding to Inaccurate Reports

One valuable thing to come out of this is a blog post from Cunliffe that offers good advice to anyone who feels they have been wronged by a press account. She starts by encouraging people to “take a deep breath ,move away from any telephones ,mobile phones and keyboards,do not send any letters .”

Also take time to “vent ,cry ,shout break some crockery if needs be ,give yourself half and hour ,or one hour if your going to phone friends.You have every right to be upset,Be honest with yourself however about any mistakes you have made and consider them and how to avoid them in future.”

Once that venting and analysis is over, Cunliffe said it’s time to get down to the business of requesting corrections:

Now get to a keyboard,contact the newspapers politely and point out their “mistakes” at this point assume that you are dealing with honest people who have made a mistake do not be accusatory.

Read minutely the article in question ,check it for any and every mistake,this may be very hurtful and upsetting but the more discrepancies you can point out when refuting the sptry the more likely you are to be listened to

Next point out the same mistakes to anyone or any site who has posted links to an online article.

Next put out your side of the story be concise ,Social network sites and twitter are your allies here ,they provide a forum for any one however unknown to air their point of view.

Cunliffe recommends reading comments on the relevant articles (“but dont be obsessive”) and “only answer those making wrong assumptions and ensure that each page of comments contains a comment on your side of the story ,be polite and if your comments are removed email the site to pint out that they are supposed to allow anyone who has a story written about them scope to reply,this doesn’t always work but may .”

Valuable advice. Shame about the way she gained this expertise…

You can listen here. A transcript is here.

Also, at one point during the interview I mistakenly referred to the “Wall Street Post” instead of the Washington Post.* We noted the error during the interview but I’ll make the correction here as well.

*Correction August 3, 2011: I originally wrote that during the radio interview I referred to the “Wall Street Post” instead of the Wall Street Journal. In fact, I had meant to say the Washington Post. So that makes this a correction to a correction. Thanks Doug!

It sometimes publishes a corrective article when a mistake is made, or it will occasionally go into online articles and scrub away mistakes. If it thinks it might get sued, the Star will offer an apology. But the paper’s editor believes corrections are a bad thing and she does her level best not to publish them.

Needless to say, I’m not a fan.

Officially, the Star ethics code states, “Whenever it is noticed that a misleading, inaccurate or distorted article has been published, it must be corrected at the earliest opportunity.” This is similar to the wording in the Media Council’s Code of Conduct. But what does that really mean in practice? To answer that question I sat down with Star Editor Catherine Gicheru.

Gicheru says that she has no problem admitting an out-and-out error — for example when the paper, earlier this year, mixed up an MP’s wife with another woman of the same name who had been charged in a fraud case, the paper carried a page two ‘Apology’ the next day.

But Gicheru says that she tries hard to avoid corrections whenever possible. The main reason, she says, is her concern about the paper’s credibility. “If you have too many corrections, then your credibility starts to plummet,” she says. And, she says, a lot depends on your competition: if they aren’t printing many corrections, you don’t want to print many either.

This a backward attitude, though it’s one that used to prevail at many news organizations.

A few quick points: If you have too many errors, your credibility can plummet. It’s not the same for corrections. And if your competition doesn’t publish corrections, you have an opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to accountability and professionalism.

The truth is one of the worst things a media outlet can do when it comes to errors is to refuse to acknowledge them, or to offer disingenuous corrections. There is evidence readers feel better about the quality of a newspaper when they see corrections. It demonstrates accountability.

There are some weeks when she fields as many as three serious demands for corrections, she says, and other weeks when there are none. Her first line of defence is to let the complainant simply blow off steam. Often, she says, that, plus a sympathetic manner and a believable explanation, is enough to cause the caller to relent. “Most often people cool down and say, ‘Okay, I can understand how it happened,’” she says.

Understanding how it happened is good, as is talking to people who request corrections. But it’s wrong to talk them out of a correction when there was a mistake.

Some of her other time-tested responses are to offer the person the opportunity to write a letter or a commentary. Or, she may offer the prospect of a friendly story at a later date to make up for the offending one.

Really? Gicheru would rather promise favorable future coverage than issue a basic correction? That’s unethical.

Gicheru also favours a technique that I’ve also seen used elsewhere: finding a reason to run a follow-up story that corrects the error without ever acknowledging that one has been made …

Anything to avoid a correction…

Gicheru says that if she decides that there is no other course but to print a correction, she will determine what to call it according to its severity. If it’s an honest mistake, it will be called a ‘clarification’. If it’s inexcusable, it will be called a ‘correction’. And if it has the potential to turn into a libel case, it will be billed as an ‘apology’. “You’re really pleading at that point,” she says.

I don’t think readers understand the distinction between a clarification and a correction, so I usually counsel news organizations to stick to one term. However, if you’re offering an apology then by all means call it that.

After hearing the many ways in which the paper’s editor goes out of her way to avoid corrections, Rothmyer offers this view:

Maybe it’s because I’m no longer in the hot seat myself, either as a reporter or an editor, but I personally would like to see more Star corrections (called, moreover, by their right name rather than the weasel word ‘clarification’).

Agreed, but what about the scrubbing and the unethical practice of promising favorable coverage after an error?

Hat tip to Stinky Journalism.

*Correction August 3, 2011: The original headline on this post left out the word “to”. Thanks to @scottleadingham for spotting the typo!

I’ve written about this issue, and Scott Rosenberg of MediaBugs has also advocated for version control. He even helped get a related WordPress plugin released.

Here’s Brisbane:

… Like the newsroom itself, the daily news report is evolving rapidly, and The Times will benefit by having clear standards for how mistakes and changes are handled in the fast-paced digital environment.

Unlike print, digital news is often updated throughout the day and night, sometimes many times. Versions evolve and sometimes morph into something quite different. Mistakes happen and are fixed. How The Times tracks and manages this can be very confusing.

For example, in the days after news broke that Arnold Schwarzenegger had fathered a child with his family’s housekeeper before becoming California’s governor, The Times ran an article about her, describing her neighborhood in Bakersfield. Some readers complained that this invaded her privacy.

You won’t find that article anywhere on NYTimes.com now, though, because later the same day a completely different story, written with a different focus by a different reporter, replaced it online and eventually appeared in the paper. Meanwhile, the original article appeared elsewhere, including on the front page of The Press Democrat, a newspaper in Santa Rosa, Calif., that is owned by The New York Times Company. The story can still be found on that paper’s Web site.

A different example arose on the Op-Ed page, where on May 1 the columnist Ross Douthat responded to the breaking news of Osama bin Laden’s killing by writing a column on Bin Laden’s failure to strike further against America after 9/11. Mr. Douthat had already written a piece for that day, about Libya, which appeared online but then, like the original housekeeper article, went poof when it was replaced — gone forever.

It’s problematic when content just disappears. It can also be problematic in a different way when content changes more subtly as a story evolves through the course of the day. One recent example even involves The Times’s June 2 coverage of Ms. Abramson’s appointment. An early version of the article included this quote from her: “In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”

Later versions appeared without that quote, and various news organizations and bloggers saw this as airbrushing something that could cause problems for The Times. In response, a Times spokeswoman said the story was updated with fresher material from Ms. Abramson’s speech to the staff later that day …

This topic is a big one in some newsrooms. When I spoke at the recent Organization of News Ombudsmen conference, I was asked what the best policy is for correcting/noting changes to breaking news stories online. At this point there is no widely accepted policy. I advise people to always error on the side of disclosure. If you made a factual error, or created confusion for the reader, you add a correction—even if the mistaken content was only online for a few minutes. Did you replace an older version of a story with a new one? Explain why and what was changed.

More from Brisbane:

My preference would be that The Times do more to document and retain significant changes and corrections like those I have described. It has a policy against removing material from its archive (except in rare cases), on the principle that the record should be preserved. The Times should clarify its policy on replacing stories online, which looks like de facto removal to me, and offer the public a better-documented archive that includes all significant versions and all corrections. A clear policy statement on this, posted online, would make it easier for readers to understand The Times’s approach.

Right now, tracking changes is not a priority at The Times. As Ms. Abramson told me, it’s unrealistic to preserve an “immutable, permanent record of everything we have done.”

Rosenberg writes in response:

Really, there’s nothing unrealistic about preserving an “immutable, permanent record” of every post-publication change made to every story.

Wikipedia — a volunteer organization run by a variety of ad hoc institutions — can do it. Any WordPress blog can do it. It seems peculiarly defeatist for our leading newsroom to shrug and say it can’t be done.
By making story versions “not a priority,” the Times is essentially abdicating its longstanding status as our paper of record as it makes the transition from paper to digital. I doubt that’s what its leaders intend to do. The more they ponder this, the more I think they’ll see that a versioning system for news is not only valuable but inevitable.

Rosenberg is right: it’s not unrealistic from a technical perspective to implement change tracking.

It does, however, require the will to get it done. Let’s hope Abramson changes her mind.

Fox News simply scrubbed the article and hasn’t offered up an explanation or correction. Noted Gawker:

This isn’t the greatest act of journalistic malpractice we’ve ever seen. But to post the news of a student’s suicide under the headline “GWU Suicide Tragically Coincides with Obama Speech” in the political news section seems a bit… chilling.

Here’s the Atlantic Wire’s screenshot of the offending piece:

Thanks, @akwhitacre!

*Correction April 15, 2011: This post mistakenly referred to Obama as “Omaba.” Thanks, Dee!

Here’s a notable section (emphasis theirs):

Is online content, with its rapid turnaround requirement, held to the same standards as material that appears in print? In general, the answer is no. Over half (51%) of original content that appears on Web sites is either not copy-edited at all, or is copy-edited less rigorously than in print. Moreover, just under half (43%) of respondents say that there is either a lower standard for fact-checking online (35%) or no fact-checking at all (8%).

Web sites are more likely to have lower standards in these areas as their traffic rises, and when content decisions are made by independent Web editors.

These bullet points are also of note:

• Fact checking (excluding blogs) is less rigorous online than in print.
• Web sites with more than 50,000 visitors a month fact-check less rigorously than sites with less traffic.
• Fact-checking is more likely to be lax when independent Web editors are in charge of online content decisions.
• Many magazines Web sites correct errors without acknowledging the mistakes.
• Error correction rises with Web traffic and profitability, but methods of doing so are inconsistent.
• Error corrections rise when independent Web editors make content decisions, but independent Web editors are more likely than print counterparts or publishers to correct with no notice.

The report has some additional detail (below), but those are the headlines. Some thoughts:

• Scrubbing is rampant. The vast majority of magazine websites are not publishing corrections for “typos or misspellings.” Also note that the report refers to these as “minor errors.” Well, not all typos and misspellings are equal. Yes, a typo that doesn’t change the meaning or reader’s understanding of a sentence (or introduce a factual error) can be fixed without requiring a correction. But what if a typo results in you reporting that Queen Elizabeth “lays up to 2,000 eggs per day”? Would they scrub that, too? We don’t really know. But once you are in the habit of scrubbing, it’s easy to start disappearing factual errors, which is unethical.
• Fact checking is seen as a “nice to have” for online magazine content. It’s been relegated to luxury status. Within magazines, print and online are seen very differently, with print viewed as the place to invest in fact checking and copy editing.
• One thing the report doesn’t make clear is what it means by fact checking. People who fact check for a living often say there’s no such thing as partial or “less rigorous” fact checking. Either check all of the facts, or don’t call it fact checking. So it would be useful to know how these respondents defined fact checking. Are professional fact checkers reviewing the online content? Or is an editor told to, for example, check the names and numbers before publication? It’s possible what respondents refer to as fact checking is, in fact, not in any way related to what traditional magazine fact checking looks like.

More fact checking data from the report:

Fact-checking (excluding blogs) is less rigorous online than in print for 35%
of respondents (Fig. 19).
• 8% do not fact-check print or online content.
• 8% do not fact-check online-only content.
• 27% say online-only content is fact-checked, but less rigorously than print
content.
• 57% use the same fact-checking process for online-only and print content.
In total, 84% of magazines surveyed do at least some fact-checking of their online-
only content and 92% fact-check their print content.
Figure 19: Fact-checking
Which best describes how online-only content is fact-checked?

More about corrections:

Many magazines Web sites correct errors without acknowledging the
mistakes (Fig. 23).
• 87% correct minor errors, such as typos or misspellings, with no indication to readers.
• 45% correct factual errors with no indication to readers.
• 37% correct factual errors and append an editor’s note detailing the nature of the error to the content where the mistake appeared.
• 6% leave major factual errors in as they originally appeared in the content, but add an editor’s note at the point of the error.
• 1% note all errors in a special section of the Web site.

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 errors have been scrubbed out of the online version of the article.

We have investigated the claims of Mr. Raji’s agent and although we have several credible sources for the report we have decided to take it down while we continue reporting the story.

So you just disappear the story rather than explain that you now have doubts about it? The report finally earned a correction this week after the NFL released the list of players who tested positive at the combine. Raji wasn’t on it. Here’s the correction:

An SI.com report posted earlier this month incorrectly stated that Boston College defensive tackle B.J. Raji‘s name would appear on the NFL’s list of players who tested positive for drugs at the NFL Scouting Combine in February. We regret the error.

SI did Raji a major disservice by going with the initial report, scrubbing it, and then publishing a weak correction. Where’s the apology, and explanation of how the error occurred? From the FanHouse:

Posting a correction was obviously the right thing to do, but questions remain about why SI got this story wrong and why it took so long to correct its mistake. I have attempted to contact Pauline, and he has not responded to my messages. It’s a shame that after Pauline and SI were so quick to report this erroneous information, they’ve now been so slow to accept responsibility.

UPDATE: The New York Post published this correction on April 23:

Based on a report that originated on SI.com, The Post reported on April 20 that Boston College defensive tackle B.J. Raji’s name would appear on the NFL’s list of players who tested positive for drugs at the Scouting Combine in February. This was incorrect. Mr. Raji did not test positive for drugs at the Combine. The Post regrets the error.

…Pregnant women in North Dakota may now not be able to celebrate and show off their unborn baby the way society has traditionally accepted.
The North Dakota House of Representatives passed a bill that states a picture of a fertilized egg is now considered child pornography. It is now going to the North Dakota Senate to be voted on. This bill, if passed, will make it possible for women and men who have a sonogram as their profile picture on Facebook to be arrested and put on a sex offender registry list…

Here’s an excerpt of the apology, as published in the grand Forks Herald:

The editorial ‘Sonograms, child porn’ ” which ran in (a recent) opinions section was completely inaccurate and based on false sources. No bill has been passed in North Dakota that states a picture of a fertilized egg is now considered child pornography. … We wrote an editorial based on what we later learned was a satirical piece. …We at the Targum deeply regret the error …please accept our deepest apologies for not checking our sources.

… Generally, the Star believes that unpublishing is a serious act as it erases the online history of the Star’s journalism. The Star’s policy on this states that while we indeed take seriously concerns of inaccuracy and will correct articles online, just as we do in the newspaper, we do not unpublish articles from our websites. This policy here is similar to that of other major newspapers, including the Washington Post, The New York Times and the Guardian.
If the Star ascertains that a mistake has been published, we correct it. Online, that means editing the text and also appending notes to the articles to tell readers that a correction has been made.
“Just as in print, the Star stands behind what it publishes online. Our purpose is to disclose information, not to hide information because it makes someone unhappy,” says Neil Sanderson, the Star’s assistant managing editor, digital. “If things started disappearing from our websites, readers might suspect that we were trying to conceal an error.
“As well, the stories that we publish are part of the historical record of our city, our province and our country,” he said. “To remove these stories from our archive would leave holes in our history.”

Derek Donovan, readers’ representative at the Kansas City Star, dedicated his end of year column to thanking readers for helping the paper correct errors. Excerpt:

One of my most important jobs at The Kansas City Star is tracking the corrections that run on Page A-2, and I was recently reminded how vital a role readers play in that process …
While appending a correction last Friday, I remembered vividly the caller who’d pointed out the mistake — dollar amounts for police badges that didn’t make sense as written. I then flipped through the previous month’s corrections tally and realized just how many of them came directly from readers, many of whom had no personal interest other than a desire to see The Star set the record straight …
The great collective wisdom of readers comes from the thousands of specialists who follow the news related to their specific areas of interest. I know I can always rely on military buffs to pick apart inaccurate descriptions of the patches on soldiers’ uniforms, or proud moms and dads who let me know when a school has sent in an incomplete team roster or honor roll. No mistake is truly trivial.
So I offer a sincere thanks to you, the readers. You’re directly responsible for alerting me to a huge percentage of those errors that result in corrections (435 so far this year). The Star is obviously far from perfect, but your attention to detail makes it better.

Scrubbing Away Their Sins

We used to be able to throw out the news; to disappear it.

The morning paper would find its way into the trash. A radio or television newscast would float off into the ether. It’s a cliché to say it by now, but the Web has changed that.

Articles and broadcasts now reside in online archives, are quoted or embedded on blogs, and republished on other news sites. Google keeps a snapshot of the original page cached on its servers. The new permanence of news makes it more important than ever to initially get a story right, lest an error rocket around the world. But when prevention fails, a suitable correction must follow. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen …

The information was attributed to “sources” — and it was far from the truth. In fact, Avery suffered a lacerated spleen. He did visit a hospital, but he was conscious, breathing, and not in cardiac arrest.

Roughly an hour after the News story went online, the Rangers issued a statement that contained the correct information. Canadian media outlets also ran stories with the correct information. So, how did the News correct its false report?

It didn’t. The paper scrubbed the story of its former claims and didn’t include a correction. Hockeyfights.com has a screengrab of the original story (and a great timeline of events). Now compare it with the post-scrub version.

Presto, no errors! No ethics, either.

The News sent hockey reporters and blogs into a frenzy with its shocking scoop and then tried to act like nothing happened. It’s ridiculous to have to point out that the paper has a responsibility to issue a correction and explain how the error occurred. Did a good source give it bad information? Did the reporters misunderstand the information they were given? There could be any number of reasons, but the News has chosen to scrub the record clean and remain silent. As is frequently the case today, other journalists and bloggers aren’t letting them get away with it.

Scrubbing is a fundamentally dishonest practice. Sure, you can fix a typo that doesn’t cause a factual error, or that doesn’t change the meaning of a sentence. But scrubbing even a minor factual error is unethical. It’s an attempt to save face that breaks the corrections contract (“if we make an error, we’ll correct it in a public manner”) that the press is supposed to have with readers.

Thanks to Andrew Bucholtz for the tip.