At some point every newly appointed ombudsman/public editor will address the issue of errors and corrections. Often they come back to it again and again. The former ombudsman at the Washington Post, Andrew Alexander, is a good example. (See here, here, here). His successor, Patrick B. Pexton, has now weighed in with a blog post [...]
Patrick B. Pexton, the Washington Post’s new ombudsman, hasn’t been on the job long but he’s already written about an incident of plagiarism at the paper. Here’s the editor’s note that was added to the offending piece: This article in the April 17 Travel section included material that was taken without attribution from a documentary [...]
Given the fact that journalists have been mixing up the names of President Obama and Osama Bin Laden for a good three years or more, it’s no surprise that the coverage of last night’s huge news included many of these slips. Here’s a sampler of Obama/Osama errors. This, from a local Fox affiliate, may be [...]
The Washington Post today published an editor's note to admit that two articles about the Rep. Giffords shooting included plagiarized material: Two articles published by The Post online and in its print editions earlier this month contained substantial material that was borrowed and duplicated, without attribution, from The Arizona Republic newspaper. The articles described an [...]
Gawker noticed that the Washington Post mistakenly published a version of a story that still included all of the editor's notes and direction to the writer. Here's a sample of what some readers saw: Tamika Felder figured she was young and healthy and could skip getting Pap smears for a few years when her job [...]
I'm a bit delayed in noting this correction from earlier this month (it was sent in by a few people and noted by Jim Brady on Twitter): Because of incorrect information from the Prince George's County Animal Management Group, this Animal Watch item incorrectly referred to a bird rescued Feb. 5 in Laurel in an [...]
In his final column, outgoing Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander writes that the Post … has become riddled with typos, grammatical mistakes and intolerable "small" factual errors that erode credibility. Local news coverage, once robust, has withered. The Post often trails the competition on stories. The excessive use of anonymous sources has expanded into blogs. [...]
The holiday season is supposed to be a time of happiness, but there has been little cheer from readers upset about a chronic Post problem: a lack of quality control. The past few years have seen a crescendo of complaints about typos, grammatical errors and minor factual mistakes. In recent weeks, a string of lapses [...]
A recent Post story said that of the $1.3 million the D.C. Salvation Army collected during its annual Red Kettle fundraising drive last year, about $667,000 came from outside local Giant supermarkets. "That's a little less than half of the group's holiday total," The Post reported. "It's actually a little more than half," an annoyed [...]
A Names & Faces item in the Nov. 27 Style section, about a Johns Hopkins University course based on the HBO drama series "The Wire," misquoted the show's creator, David Simon, who visited the class this semester. According to Simon and the Baltimore Sun, he responded to a student's question about hopeful signs for her [...]
… the Post regularly prints letters either on the editorial page or in the "Free For All" page on Saturdays that point out errors, but then does not actually print a correction on A2 or append a correction to the article online. For example, the Post still has "Inventory Uncovers 9,200 More Pathogens" as the [...]
Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the day these words appeared on a front page of the Sunday Washington Post: "Jimmy is 8 years old and a third-generation heroin addict, a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms. "He nestles in [...]
This charming video features Washington Post fiction editor Ron Charles performing a piece dedicated to errors and corrections (click on the empty space below if it's not displaying properly): Thanks to Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, for sending it along. Report an error
Dean Miller, director of the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University, says news consumers should pay attention to what he calls "the APCs" to determine the validity of an online source of news. That stands for Authority, Point of View and Currency e.g., whether the site has recent information and the links are [...]
Jonathan Capehart is an editorial writer for the Washington Post, an MSNBC contributor and a seemingly smart, nice guy. If he is indeed a nice guy, he will probably have to just grin and bear it for a few days after a somewhat ill-conceived blog post made Monday night. In an entry in WaPo's "PostPartisan" [...]
Washington Post columnist Mike Wise had a point he wanted to make about the declining standards of the media. He made that point in the worst way imaginable: By making up a phony "scoop" and posting it on Twitter. It all started early Monday afternoon, when Wise tweeted that he had been told the NFL [...]
Washington Post columnist John Kelly recently turned up a dandy of a correction from the Post's archives. Read his column for the story that preceded this correction, which was published in 1897: LANHAM, MD., AUG. 18 — The account of a horsewhipping in this morning's Post, in which Andrew Hancock and Clifford Lanham were the [...]
In last Thursday’s The Score column about superstar teen athletes, we ran a picture of a baseball player who we said was Bob Feller. It was really a picture of Ted Williams. Feller was pitching to Williams but was not in the photograph. Link Report an error
The Tracee Hamilton column in the June 19 Sports section, about Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg, incorrectly referred to former Houston Astros pitcher J.R. Richard as deceased. Richard, whose record for most strikeouts in a pitcher’s first three starts was broken by Strasburg, is alive. Link Report an error
A preview of the Republican primary for governor in South Carolina in the June 6 A-section incorrectly said that “several men” have alleged that one of the candidates, state Rep. Nikki Haley, committed adultery in affairs with them. Two men have made such an allegation. Link Report an error
Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander continues to beaver away on the corrections beat. (See some of his previous work here.) Yesterday’s column looked at the paper’s less than effective process for enabling readers to report errors: … Many readers have also complained that the Web site doesn’t offer an effortless way to report journalistic errors. [...]
A June 8 Metro article about a pregnant woman who was shot with a Taser and beaten in Montgomery County incorrectly said that the victim was 35 1/2 months pregnant. She was 35 1/2 weeks pregnant. The article also referred to the suspect, Christine R. DeVaux, as a New Zealand medical student. DeVaux had attended [...]
A June 9 KidsPost article on interesting things about the English language said that the words “scissors,” “binoculars” and “tongs” exist only as plurals. “Scissor” exists as a verb, and it can be used as a noun to mean scissors. “Binocular” is an adjective. “Tong” is a verb, and also a noun referring to certain [...]
A May 25 Style review of Zev Chafets’s book “Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One” incorrectly quoted the book as reporting that Limbaugh thought of President George H.W. Bush as “a pretty, country club moderate.” That sentence in the book reads, “Bush struck him as a preppy, country club moderate, an Ivy League snob.” The [...]
Andrew Alexander, the Washington Post’s ombudsman, is doing a good job on the corrections beat at the paper. Last year, he wrote two columns about the paper’s problems with handling corrections requests (1,2). (See my previous post here.) Yesterday, he followed up with a blog post that includes some good news, along with details about [...]
