Tag Archives: toronto star

Toronto Star publishes corrections tally; announces corrections/errors database

January 2, 2008 – 8:00 am

Kathy English, the public editor of the Toronto Star, wrote a recent column that reveals the paper’s corrections total for 2007. She also announced that the paper will have a corrections/errors database up and running in 2008. (See these 1,2 articles to learn about this kind of database.) English also wrote a November column about accuracy after I visited the Star and gave a presentation about the topic. From her latest column:

…In 2007, the Star has published 497 corrections, up to and including today.
That’s slightly less than last year’s final tally of 512 and considerably less than many major metropolitan newspapers, including The New York Times, which logged 3,600 corrections in its computerized corrections tracker this year.
The Guardian in Britain usually publishes six corrections a day, six days a week – about 1,800 annually. Among this year’s is one worthy of inclusion in a Corrections Hall of Shame: “We misspelled the word misspelled twice, as mispelled, in the corrections and clarifications column on September 26, page 30.”
I’ve written corrections for the Star that have made me cringe.
Last month, an article reported on the tasering incident involving Vancouver police. Of course, the RCMP was involved in the incident at the Vancouver airport, a fact the Vancouver police force was quick to point out in requesting a correction.
Other corrections made me laugh out loud at the silliness of our mistakes. One of my favourites: 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. As numerous readers pointed out, one million killed since 1950 would amount to 48 deaths a day. That one was picked up and published by the popular newspaper error website Regret the Error, under the headline The Detroit massacre.
Speaking of which, the Star did in fact kill a couple of well-known people by mistake, a practice known as “obiticide,” or death by media. A Nov. 23 item about actors from the 1960s’ TV series Hogan’s Heroes incorrectly listed Richard Dawson as deceased. In March, an article about Canada’s Walk of Fame inductees incorrectly referred to “the late Morley Safer.” In fact, as our correction noted, Safer is alive and continues to file stories as a 60 Minutes correspondent.
How do these errors happen within a newsroom in which great care is taken in writing, editing and proofreading? Sometimes, it’s because of what journalists have come to label “brain cramp” – we know better, but still we goof. Sometimes, it’s carelessness and the rush to deadline. Always, it’s because those who produce this newspaper are human, and a perfect human – let alone a perfect journalist – has yet to evolve.
Still, it’s important that the Star is accountable to our readers for its errors and, more so, that we learn from our mistakes. That’s why, in coming weeks, my office will launch our own “accuracy tracker,” a computer database that will track newsroom errors and corrections and the reasons why these mistakes occur to help the newsroom identify preventative measures…

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Newspapers, Ombudsmen | Also tagged , | Comments

Toronto Sun column about errors

December 3, 2007 – 8:00 am

Toronto Sun columnist Mark Bonokoski was inspired to write a column last week about newspaper errors after spotting this correction in the Toronto Star, a competing newspaper:

Brian Mulroney’s Memoirs 1939-1993 is 1,152 pages, which means that its price per page is 4.5 cents. An incorrect page count was given in a Nov. 25 comparison between his and Jean Chretien’s recently published books. The Star regrets the error.

Bonokoski called the editor of the Star to “inquire if the correction was made at the behest of Mr. Mulroney himself who, one would think, would have more on his mind these days that an incorrect page count regarding his recently published memoir-in-progress.”
In fact, as usual, a Star spokesman said “it was a gazzilion readers wondering how a 3-pound book could possibly have only 100 pages.They did the math, obviously, and the phone never stopped ringing.
“But, no, it was not Mulroney who called.”
The column continues:

This newspaper, like the Star, has a well-stated policy to correct all significant errors brought to the editor’s attention. And, since no one working here is non-human (on most days), we tend to make our share of mistakes in the chaotic pot-boiling, helter skelter of putting out a daily newspaper — even though, like most major newspapers, the mistakes are surprisingly few.
How a newspaper even manages to make it to the street each day is still a miracle that has never been totally explained, and so errors are bound to happen from time to time.
Still, each and every error drives us all crazy — the reporter or columnist involved, and the editors who oversee them. And I write this confessing to have made my share of mistakes over the last 30 years, although relatively few in retrospect, none of a truly serious nature, and none that have ended at the losing end of a libel action or having to suffer the castigation of the Ontario Press Council.
It is not a business to take accuracy lightly, and those that do, do so at their own peril.
What I have learned, however, is that readers rarely fail to catch each and every error, even the truly minor ones.
It comes, I think, from their sense of proprietorship.
It is their newspaper, and they care about it.
And, secondly, each reader who catches a mistake invariably thinks he or she is the only one to have caught it — or the first one, at the very least, if they call early enough in the day. And it gives them great joy.
Sometimes it is just a typo that brings the grief…
So far this year, there have been two corrections in this newspaper where fault can be placed directly on my shoulders. One was the result of me naming the wrong community service club involved in helping to organize the Friday the 13th biker days in Port Dover, and the other was the result of me hitting the wrong but in-close-proximity key, and tying “Maria” rather than “Marla” when writing about the mother of recently murdered RCMP Const. Doug Scott, who was raised in my hometown of Lyn, just outside the St. Lawrence Seaway town of Brockville.
That mistake, without question, troubled me profoundly.
Anyone who practises journalism, or teaches it in our universities and colleges, will know that a goodly number of errors often come, not in the body copy, but in the headlines or the picture captions.
In a recent column about lunatic 14 Division cop-turned-killer Richard Wills, for example, his name turned up in the headline as Willis.
Proofreaders should catch these errors, and most often do. But, then again, to err is human.
I don’t know precisely how many readers called or e-mailed to set me straight that day, but there were well over two dozen. And the gist of them all was this: “How can you be so stupid as to write the wrong name in the headline over your own column?”
The short answer, of course, is that reporters and columnists do not write the headlines, and nor do they write the captions under the photographs that accompany their pieces.
Those are written by desk editors who, during the course of putting a newspaper to bed, write scores of headlines and scores of captions — all under the constant pressure of deadline.
So they occasionally make mistakes, too.
That said, when a newspaper states up-front that it “regrets the error,” it truly does regret the error. It goes to credibility and, without credibility, all else is lost.
Good reputations do not come without hard work, and there is pride to be found in hard work done well.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Newspapers | Also tagged | Comments

Giving truth to an allegation

December 3, 2007 – 8:00 am

A Nov. 15 Sports column commented on reports of allegations that New York Rangers’ forward Sean Avery goaded Toronto Maple Leaf Jason Blake about his battle with leukemia, leading to a pre-game scuffle between Avery and Toronto’s Darcy Tucker. There is no evidence that Avery made such remarks, and in fact, as was reported in that Star column, he has denied the allegations. The Star regrets the error. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged | Comments

Tried in the press

November 30, 2007 – 8:00 am

Murder victim Ryan Hyde was convicted of aggravated assault in relation to the death of Robert Tracey. A Nov. 27 headline about Hyde’s murder incorrectly stated he was a convicted killer.
The Star regrets the error. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged | Comments

Death by media

November 27, 2007 – 8:00 am

A Nov. 23 Hot Box item about actors from the 1960s TV series Hogan’s Heroes incorrectly listed Richard Dawson (b. Nov. 20, 1932) as deceased. The Star regrets the error. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged | Comments

The Detroit massacre

November 21, 2007 – 8:00 am

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. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged | Comments

No parking (lots)

October 24, 2007 – 8:00 am

Contrary to two articles published on Oct. 20 and 22, Impark (Imperial Parking Canada Corporation) did not operate the parking lots near the Cirque du Soleil performances at Commissioner and Cherry Sts., and does not have parking lots in that area. The Star regrets the error and apologizes to Impark. Link

Background to this here and here. Thanks, Tyler!

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged | Comments Off

UPDATED: Toronto Star and two other papers lift decade-old item, run it as new

January 2, 2006 – 8:01 am

When we came across this editorial(we’ve struck “editorial” because according to Antonia Zerbisias of the Star it is a) brief from the Star’s weekend Life section(found via Fark) it made our day:

Moon God Drinking Products Co., a skin care company in China, has
offered a bounty of 1,000 yuan ($144) for every typographical or
literary error found in a day’s editions of four Chinese publications
in an attempt to embarrass journalists into better writing. Hao
Mingjian, who came up with the idea for the bounty, said that “China’s
press has lost its polish in the past decade or two,” which “reflects a
chaotic cultural environment and shows people lack a sense of
responsibility.” We applaud Hao’s initiative, but we have learned over our years at the Star that it is impossible to embarrass journalists. Public humiliation is our stock in trade…

We liked it so much that we tried to track down the original story. That led us to This is True, which recently had the item up on its website, though it wasn’t on the home page anymore. We also saw that two other publications had used the item. The Wisconsin State Journal ran it and credited This is True. The Rocky Mountain News published it and credited Reuters. We searched in Factiva for the original Reuters story. Nothing showed up in the past year. We searched the Reuters site and also came up empty-handed.
So we emailed Randy Cassingham, the man behind the This is True empire. He told us that he had recently been ill and that caused him to pull together some of his favorite strange-but-true items from 10 years earlier for the December 5 edition of his weekly newsletter. (Producing an all-new version would have been too difficult.) Cassingham told his readers that all the items were old favorites. Included was this item from July 9, 1995:

Moon God Drinking Products Co., a skin care company in China, has
offered a bounty of 1,000 yuan (US$120) for every typographical or
literary error found in a day’s editions of four Chinese publications
in an attempt to embarrass journalists into better writing. Hao
Mingjian, who came up with the idea for the bounty, said that “China’s
press has lost its polish in the past decade or two,” which “reflects a
chaotic cultural environment and shows people lack a sense of
responsibility.” (Reuters) …Nice try, but journalists can’t be embarrassed.

So the Star and the News and the Journal all poached an item more than a decade old, failed to verify it, and reported it as new news. As Cassingham noted in an email to us after we directed him to the Star editorial story it appears that the Star even chose to crib and slightly alter Cassingham’s line that “journalists can’t be embarrassed.” Not to mention the fact that the paper used his item pretty much verbatim.
“Note they even stole my tagline for the story — my comment on the story that’s my stock in trade as a news commentary columnist — and published it as their own,” he told us via email. “That’s the very definition of plagiarism, isn’t it?”
The irony of this — a very large media mistake in a story about media mistakes — is rich. But Cassingham has every right to be upset. All three papers failed their readers by not checking the wire to verify the story. But the Star’s infractions are by far the worst. The paper lifted the item and failed to credit any source. Then it plagiarized.
“It’s patently obvious where they got this story,” said Cassingham. “That they didn’t check their Reuters wires for corroboration is shocking — it’s no wonder that there is scandal after scandal of embarrassing plagiarism, made-up stories, and other malfeasance by newspapers these days.”
Let’s see what kind of correction or apology is offered by the newspapers. In the Star’s case, it better be substantial. UPDATE: Go here to read about the Star’s correction.
We’ve pasted more of Cassingham’s poignant comments below. And we found the original Reuters report (though it was “Reuter” back then). It hit the wire on June 26, 1995 and was picked up in the Baltimore Evening Sun, USA Today and the Chicago Sun-Times:

SHANGHAI, June 26 (Reuter) – A Chinese skin care product company is
offering cash prizes to readers who spot typographical and literary
errors in Monday’s editions of three top Shanghai newspapers and a
magazine.
Moon God Drinking Products Co will hand over 1,000 yuan ($120)
for each mistake found in the Wen Hui daily, Liberation Daily, Xinmin
Evening News and the magazine Pay Attention To Words, the newspapers
reported on Monday.
As well as being a publicity stunt for the company, which makes a
drink containing powdered pearls said to improve skin tone, the aim is
to encourage journalists to brush up their prose.
“China’s press has lost its polish in the past decade or two,” said
Hao Mingjian, deputy editor-in-chief of the Shanghai Culture and Art
Publishing House, which came up with the idea for the competition. “It reflects a chaotic cultural environment and shows people lack a sense of responsibility.”

Randy Cassingham’s comments:

I’m a university-trained journalist and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. This isn’t how I learned journalism. I learned to give proper attribution. I learned to have a second source for items that are dubious. And, most importantly, I learned to have respect for the process of journalism.

Where is that respect and professionalism now? We can’t just blame Jayson Blair. Plagiarism and made-up stories is just the most outrageous fact of life now. We have long had typos and grammar blunders that would make Strunk and White seethe — so many that they’re not even worthy of comment, even ridicule, anymore.

What will be the ultimate result? We’re already seeing it: people are forgetting about newspapers and turning to TV and the Internet to get their news, because they just can’t trust newspapers anymore. We have the L.A. Times putting a hoax story on its front page. We have major city papers lifting items from a columnist, even though it’s a cinch they’ll get caught.

Newspapers scream and cry that people just don’t care anymore. They don’t get it: people DO care. They care that the news is correctly reported. They care that it’s written well. They care that it’s edited well. They care that proper attributions are made. And they’re just not getting that from newspapers anymore, so they’re moving to other media where they can get it (or, at least, think they can). And it’s not fun to watch newspapers take yet another step into the depths right before my eyes.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Online | Also tagged , | Comments Off