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” — 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.
One Comment
If you follow sports closely, you’ll come to discover it’s a common occurrence for many sports sections to employ this practice.
The print editions frequently avoid running corrections, even when someone calls them on an error.
I have little doubt that a thorough audit of a cross-section of U.S. sports sections would reveal any number of errors that were never corrected and perhaps even repeated.