This apology attracted a bit of coverage in the U.K. press, as the Leveson inquiry is ongoing and generating lots of news. It’s also, you now, a false accusation. The offending Guardian piece by Marina Hyde was harsh in characterizing what that false accusation said about the Sun:

Hyde accused the Sun of “blowing a giant raspberry at Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry or perhaps casually defecating on his lordship’s desk while doing a thumbs-up sign”.

The Press Gazette detailed how the objection from the Sun was raised at the inquiry. Here’s how the Guardian responded during the proceedings:

The Guardian’s director of editorial legal services Gill Phillips confirmed the paper had received a “strongly worded complaint” from The Sun which it had investigated this morning.

She told Lord Justice Leveson: “My instructions are that the story about The Sun is incorrect and we will publishing an appropriate correction and apology which will go up on the rolling online corrections columns as soon as agreed and will be lead correction in print tomorrow.

“We will also remove the offending two paragraph in the sketch from the online version.”

She added: “We would also like to apologise to the inquiry for this having had to take up their time this morning.”

One of the ways news organizations prepare for a big news event is to produce some canned copy. Write it up ahead of time, and just use it when ready.

Such was the case for the Amanda Knox verdict, which came out today. Lots of international news orgs were gearing up to report on the verdict as soon as it was issued.

The Daily Mail, with its gigantic website, was eager to get the news out quickly and bask in the SEO glory. So it had some copy in the can to enable it to publish a story very quickly, regardless of the outcome of the trial.

Problem was, somebody hit publish on the guilty story without waiting for the full verdict. Knox was guilty of slander, not guilty of murder. But the Mail and Sun, two massive U.K., tabloids heard the word guilty and ran with it. The results were captured by Malcolm Coles in this post.

A screenshot by him:

Here’s the Sun, with two versions of its Knox story showing up in Google News:

And some of the canned copy from the Mail’s story:

“Amanda Knox looked stunned this evening after she dramatically lost her prison appeal against her murder conviction. …

As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.

A few feet away Meredith’s mother Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family.

Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that ‘justice has been done’ although they said on a ‘human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail’.

Oh and here’s a nice touch, courtesy of the Hollywood Reporter:

When contacted by The Hollywood Reporter a spokesman for The Daily Mail’s online team simply said “there is noone available at the moment” to offer a reaction to the web error.

Will the Mail issue a correction or explanation? It’s not really the paper’s style, unless forced to do so by the PCC. (See Oct. 5 update below.)

Update Oct. 4, 2011: The Press Gazette reports that an internal investigation is underway at the Mail:

A spokesman for the Daily Mail told Press Gazette that the erroneous article was only been online for 90 seconds – and that an inquiry was underway to find out what had gone wrong.

According to a Mail insider, the quotes from the prosecutor were obtained in advance and were put in a pre-prepared story which was ready to go live in the event that Knox was found gulty [sic] of murder.

The Press Gazette story also notes that, “The same mistake was made on The Sun website, Sky News and The Guardian’s live blog, but the Mail appears to be the only news outlet that ran a full-length article.”

Update Oct. 5, 2011: The Mail published an article that includes an apology and something of an explanation of how the mistake happened. More here. The apology:

Confusion over the judge’s announcement meant Sky News and several news websites, including Mail Online, briefly reported incorrectly that Knox had been found guilty.
This was corrected just over a minute later when it became apparent that he had said she was guilty of slander before going on to say both Knox and Sollecito were innocent of Meredith’s murder.
We apologise for the error and have launched an enquiry to examine our procedures.
It is common practice among newspapers to prepare two versions of an article ahead of a court verdict and these are known as ‘set and hold’ pieces.

Thanks, MJ!

The Tabloid Watch blog has an excellent overview of the issue and some of the offending front pages. A sample:

The paper issued their apologies in court last week and subsequently published apologies — though none of the expressions of regret were given the prominence of thier original, offending coverage. A few of the apologies:

IN court yesterday the Daily Star apologised to Christopher Jefferies for articles published on December 31 2010 and January 1 2011, in which we reported on his arrest on suspicion of the murder of Joanna Yeates.
The articles suggested that there were strong grounds to believe that Mr Jefferies had killed Ms Yeates and that he had acted in an inappropriate oversexualised manner with his pupils when he was a teacher.
The articles also suggested that he had probably lied to police to obstruct their investigations.
We accepted that all these allegations were untrue and apologised to Mr Jefferies. Link

IN court yesterday the Daily Express apologised to Christopher Jefferies for articles published in the Daily Express on December 31 2010 in which we reported on his arrest on suspicion of the murder of Joanna Yeates.
The articles suggested that there were strong grounds to believe that Mr Jefferies had killed Ms Yeates and that he had acted in an inappropriate, over-sexualised manner with his pupils when he was a teacher.
in The articles also suggested that he had probably lied to police to obstruct their investigations. It was further suggested that there were grounds to investigate whether he was responsible for an unsolved murder dating back to 1974. We accepted that all these allegations were untrue and apologised to Mr Jefferies. Link

Eight newspapers apologised to Mr Christopher Jefferies in the High Court yesterday. Reports of the investigation into the death of Joanna Yeates had wrongly suggested that Mr Jefferies, who was arrested but released without charge, was suspected of killing Ms Yeates, may have had links to a convicted paedophile and an unresolved murder. It was also wrongly alleged that the former school master had acted inappropriately to pupils. The newspapers, including the Daily Mail, agreed to pay Mr Jefferies substantial damages and legal costs.
Later the Daily Mirror was fined £50,000 and the Sun ,£18,000 for contempt of court in relation to their reports. Link

Yesterday the Daily Record and other newspapers apologised in court for the publication of false allegations about the retired school master Christopher Jefferies, who, we had wrongly suggested, was strongly to be suspected of having killed his former tenant Joanna Yeates.
We also wrongly suggested that he had acted inappropriately towards his pupils in the past and invaded his tenants’ privacy.
We accepted that these allegations were untrue and that far from being involved in the crime, Mr Jefferies helped the police with their inquiries as best he could.
We have agreed to pay substantial damages to Mr Jefferies plus his legal costs. Link

*Correction August 1, 2011: The original headline of this post misspelled Jefferies as Jeffries. I regret the error.

The new caption is still misleading, if you ask me. Why no “Photo illustration” label, or something similar?

Thanks, @andrewphelps!

The offending papers include the Sun, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Times of London. The broadcaster was Sky News. Here’s a blog post from a Telegraph editor that explains why the photo is fake.

Here’s the Los Angeles Times saying that no photos of a dead Bin Laden have been released:

According to Pentagon officials, photos of Bin Laden’s dead face do exist but those widely distributed on the Internet are fake. At some point, if only to convince die-hard Bin Laden followers, officials are expected to release a corpse photo, as has been done in the past when famous villains such as Che Guevara and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were killed or captured. Additionally, such special ops are typically videotaped by mini-helmet cams to document a sensitive mission and assist in debriefing and future training.

And:

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. Link

Thanks, Jamie!

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.

Thanks, MacGuffin!

THE SUN today unreservedly apologises to Nicklas Bendtner after his stunning treble sent the Gunners storming into the Champions League quarter-finals.
Yesterday we may have inadvertently given the impression that Bendtner could not hit a cow’s Arsenal with a banjo.
But last night the giant striker’s brilliant Turn to Page 79
From Back Page display proved he really is a striker fit to grace the Emirates.
We slaughtered bungling Bendtner after his howlers in Arsenal’s 3-1 win over Burnley.
But the Pantomime Dane put those boobs ‘behind him’ with the first hat-trick of his career.
The 22-year-old striker was presented with the matchball after the match but he revealed he did not know the tradition existed.
He said: “I don’t know how this works but it is very good. It is fantastic to score a hat-trick. It has been a long time coming.
“Saturday was just one of those days. Those misses were not in my mind. I put it behind me and I was just focused on the game.”
Difficult Manager Arsene Wenger was delighted with Bendtner. He said: “It shows how quickly football changes.
“He had a difficult game on Saturday and had lots of chances. He had less chances tonight but scored three goals, so overall that is good for his confidence.”
Wenger insists he would be happy to face an English side in next week’s draw.
He added: “I don’t know who I would prefer. I have a funny feeling it might be good for us to play against an English team.
“We have not done well against Chelsea or Manchester United this year, so it could be a good chance for us to show what we can do.”
Skipper Cesc Fabregas watched the rout after jetting back from Spain where he had checks on his damaged hamstring.

More pseudo-apologies here.