Regret The Error

Cosgrove fired?

Bourque.org, Canada's answer to The Drudge Report, is running an item that says Mr. Bourque overheard two Ottawa journalists talking about how National Post columnist Gillian Cosgrove was fired for her libelous column about Canada's Governor General. (Read all about the column here.)

Here's an excerpt from the exchange on Bourque's site:

"Did you hear about Gillian Cosgrove?, asks the one from the tabloid.
"Over at the Post?", replies the one from the broadsheet.
"In a manner of speaking", says Tabloid, "the paper dropped her today. She's gone."
"A shame", notes Broadsheet, she's a good writer, but that thing about Queen Adrienne was over the top, wasn't it."
Tabloid shrugs. "I think Queen Adrienne's over the top".

For what it's worth, Cosgrove is still listed as a columnist on the Post site, but there are no recent columns. Anyone have a definitive answer?

BBC hoaxed

BBC TV and Radio fell victim to a hoaxer last week. A man who said his name was Jude Finisterra and claimed to be a spokesman for Dow Chemical went on the air at the Beeb and said Dow was taking full responsibility for the 1984 Bhopal disaster, and had set up a $12 billion fund to compensate  victim's families and survivors. Here's how the BBC described the Bhopal incident, "Thousands were killed instantly on December 3, 1984 when the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal released 40 tonnes of lethal methyl isocyanate gas into the air, in one of the world's worst environmental disasters."

The BBC has since apologized on air for getting taken and also published a "Note" on its website. The BBC publishes both Notes and corrections. Notes are for things of a more serious matter or that require more clarification. This Note quotes BBC World saying it was the victim of "an elaborate deception" that led to the phony interview. Yes Men, the group behind this and other hoaxes, has published their own account of how it was pulled off. It seems their "elaborate" hoax consisted of them responding to an email and sending someone in a suit to a television studio...

Here's the BBC World apology:

This morning at 9am and 10am (GMT) BBC World ran an interview with someone purporting to be from the Dow chemical company about Bhopal.
This interview was inaccurate, part of an elaborate deception.
The person did not represent the company and we want to make it clear that the information he gave was entirely inaccurate.

And here's the BBC Radio apology:

Earlier this morning, our news bulletin here (on Radio 2/4/5 Live) carried an extract from an interview with someone purporting to be from the Dow chemical company about the disaster twenty years ago at Bhopal in India.
It is now clear that the person did not, in fact, represent the Dow company and we want to make clear that the information he gave was entirely inaccurate. 

Ombudsmen round-up

• Paul Moore of The Baltimore Sun writes about the differing priorities of editors and readers.
• Jeffrey A. Dvorkin of NPR writes about reporting on matters of race and religion.
• Daniel Okrent of The New York Times runs a selection of letters from readers, and includes a fascinating quote from a former Times editor.
• Michael Arrieta-Walden writes about his paper's coverage of alleged election irregularities.
• Don Sellar of The Toronto Star writes about the need for coverage of world issues though Canadian eyes.
• Michael Getler of The Washington Post highlights an instance where a correction wasn't enough.

We Crunked: Regret corrections

Oh yeah, we mess up. Mostly, we spell things wrong or pooch our grammar. This week was no different, and we thank Sal, Julia, Brandon and Lauchlin for helping spread the Crunk cheer.

The Crunks:

• Our November 25 post, "Eat your hearts out, Strunk & White," misspelled the word grammar as "grammer." It has been corrected. We regret the error.
• Our November 29 post, "Another family misunderstanding," contained an excerpted passage that spelled "licenses" as "licences." As it was quoted directly from the source, we did not change it to American spelling.
• Our December 1 post, "Regret goes to Eastern Europe," misspelled the word "pierogies" as "perogies." It has been corrected. We regret the error.
• Last week's edition of, "We Crunked: Regret corrections," misspelled the name of one of our readers who helped point out one of our errors. His name is "Lauchlin" not "Laughlin." It has been corrected. We apologize and we regret the error.

And..and...and...

The Los Angeles Times had a tough time getting a bit of press history straight in a historical column:

Convention Center site — The Then and Now column in Sunday's California section about the newspaper on the site of the Los Angeles Convention Center said Will Fowler, who claimed to be the first reporter on the scene of the 1947 Black Dahlia murder, worked for the Herald-Express. At the time, Fowler worked for the Los Angeles Examiner, and he said he called its city editor, Jim Richardson, not the Herald-Express' Agness "Aggie" Underwood, after the body of Elizabeth Short was discovered. Also, the Herald-Express was a full-size newspaper, not a tabloid. In addition, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst did not buy the Los Angeles Examiner in 1903; he founded it. Also, the claim for the first use of Short's nickname, the Black Dahlia, is widely disputed, but it originated in a Long Beach drugstore and was not coined by any newspaper.

One testy correction

The New Yorker, never one to miss a funny or obscure correction, found this little gem in the Manchester Guardian:

In an article about the adverse health effects of certain kinds of clothing, pages 8 and 9, G2, August 5, we omitted a decimal point when quoting a doctor on the optimum temperature of testicles. They should be 2.2 degrees Celsius below core body temperature, not 22 degrees lower.

The New Yorker ran it under the header, "Don't Give It a Second Thought Dept."

Page Six goes literary (and errors)

Page Six, often guilty of matching the wrong photo with the wrong name, comes clean with this correction today:

WE blew it yesterday when we reported that Herman Melville worked at the front desk of the Riverview Hotel on West Street in 1907, an impossibility since the "Moby Dick" author died in 1891, as many of our more learned readers pointed out. While we're correcting bad information: a rep for Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard wants it known that the couple, who've been together for 31/2 years, have never broken up: "They live together and they are very happy together."

Two channels are better than one (especially when you know about them)

NPR seems to be lacking in self awareness:

...And in our report on Sirius Satellite Radio on Nov. 19, we said that NPR's programming is carried on one channel in the Sirius network. NPR is in fact on two channels.

Would the real Jeff please stand up?

A Washington Post correction demonstrates one fallibility when interviewing people on the street -- journalists never ask them for ID to prove they are who they say they are. (Not that we're suggesting they do; It's just hard to protect against folks who willingly mislead the media.)

This reminds us of one priceless example from a New York Post story back in May 2001. One source in an article about financial services companies opening up cafes gave his name as "Heywood Jablome." Just say it out loud...and read the excerpt below.

The Washington Post correction:

A Nov. 27 Metro article about day laborers gathered outside a Woodbridge convenience store misidentified an employee of the nearby Merchant's Tire and Auto Center. The employee told a Washington Post reporter his name was Jeff Owens. But store manager Jeff Owen never spoke to a reporter.

And The New York Post's "blow me" quote from a May 1, 2001 story:

"If I didn't work a block away, I wouldn't go in. People who want to trade can do it from their laptop or hand-held device."
Heywood Jablome, 41, a Manhattan real estate agent, agreed.
"This is a nice-looking store, but I don't see people coming in here to trade," he said. "Not the suits' who work up here. No way!"

The true power of the press

We found two corrections that demonstrate the transforming power of the media.

First, The Guardian performs a sex change:

By quoting Walter Winter as saying "Ich bin Deutsche", we made him into a woman. He said "Ich bin Deutscher"

Then the Sacramento Bee kills off a jazz legend:

A photo caption on page 11 of Sunday Ticket incorrectly indicated that jazz organist Jimmy Smith has died.

Another Canuck scribe in trouble for plagiarism

Splayed across roughly over half of the opinion page in yesterday's Ottawa Citizen is a 1,514-word article in which veteran journalist Robert Sibley admits to several instances where he used the words of others without proper attribution. The piece is thoroughly apologetic and itemizes each instance. It follows on the heels of the firing of Elizabeth Nickson from the National Post over a similar offense. Sibley, who was on the paper's Editorial Board, has now been "reassigned" within the Citizen.

The article begins, "After 25 years in journalism as a reporter, editor, feature writer, essayist, columnist and editorial writer, it is with deep regret that I inform colleagues and readers of mistakes of attribution in some of my recent work."

This apology and correction is rare primarily because it is written by the offender and not by the editors of the paper. It is also rare in that a repeat offender was not fired.

This article, while sincere, unquestionably apologetic, and heartbreaking to read, does fall short in one critical area: it does not tell us how the errors were discovered and how the paper is certain there were no other instances. As far as the reader knows, Sibley just spontaneously decided to fess up. Did the paper install anti-plagiarism software? Did a reader -- or one of the people Sibley failed to credit -- complain?

In situations such as this, it is better to over-explain.  Readers who feel they have not had all their questions answered will likely assume that the paper is trying to cover something up. Sibley's apology should have been accompanied by a note from the editors explaining how the errors were discovered and what has been done to improve their anti-plagiarism measures.

Back to the errors...The article lists eight times Sibley did not properly attribute the work of others. His explanation was this:

Firstly, I lost control of my material. Whether I write an editorial or a large series, I do as much background research and information gathering as time allows and necessity dictates. The more complex the article or story, the more research. The risk in this effort is being inundated with too much information, some of which is easily recalled, some of which isn't and some of which becomes part of me in the sense that, like anyone else, I absorb some of what I learn. For example, I don't recall reading Anderson's "Pilgrimage to the Stars" article, although it is obvious I must have. I presume (in hindsight) that her sentence got lost in the large amount of historical material I gathered in preparing to write my 50,000-word series. I was careless.

Secondly, in the references to Scruton, Zakaria, Feldman and Nagel, I didn't sufficiently distinguish my primary and secondary sources. For instance, Nagel offers a summary of Descartes' thought that is familiar to me. I surmise (again, in hindsight) that I incorporated his words in my initial draft and then did not think to question something I "knew" when I did the final draft sometime later.

Read the specific errors and other parts of the article by following the link below, as the article is not available on the Citizen's website.

Continue reading "Another Canuck scribe in trouble for plagiarism"

Regret goes to Eastern Europe

Chaos in the Ukrainian election has bred a whole stream of Eastern European-themed errors in newspapers. So we cooked up a few pierogie, learned how to spell "Yushchenko," and set out to hunt some of them down.

The most published error was this one from the Associated Press, which ran in well over 20 papers (as far as we can count so far):

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - In a Nov. 15 story about a televised debate between Ukraine's top two presidential candidates, The Associated Press erroneously translated a statement by Viktor Yushchenko. The word "free" was mistranslated as "honest." Yushchenko said, "We have a choice: To live according to criminal laws or as free well-to-do people."

Here’s another AP error, straight from the Ukraine, and published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Because of an error by the Associated Press, a map on Page A14 of Sunday's Plain Dealer incorrectly identified Slovakia as Slovenia

The San Francisco Chronicle also jumped on the mistake bandwagon. In fact, it got downright medieval:

A story in Insight last Sunday, "Tense Ukraine runoff," misidentified Kievan Rus. It was a medieval state, with its center the current city of Kiev, that included most of what is today Ukraine, Belarus and part of modern Russia.

The Economist managed to get Ukraine right, but flubbed on that all-important Czech Republic short-term interest rate (don’t leave home without it):

In last week's issue (The flying forint) we said that the Czech Republic's official short-term interest rate was 1.5%. The correct figure is 2.5%. Apologies...

Seen others? Send 'em in.

He's not Sir Harvey Weinstein

Just to show that we aren't the only blog out there that runs corrections, here's one from Gawker Media's Defamer blog:

A reader from across the pond corrects the American media's references (and ours) to Harvey Weinstein as "Sir Harvey" after he was recognized as an honorary Commander of the British Empire last week.

The correction is here, along with a subsequent correction to a reader's email that corrected Defamer. (Confused? Just click on the link.)

The rumor's true: all journalists look alike

The Guardian got a couple of CBS elder statesmen mixed up in an article about Dan Rather:

Contrary to what we said in our profile of Dan Rather, page 15, November 26, Mr Rather was not portrayed by Christopher Plummer in Michael Mann's film The Insider. Plummer played another 60 Minutes presenter, Mike Wallace.

Steve Guttenberg lives!

Either cops in Utah are desperate for new recruits, or they're filming a new Police Academy sequel. (We hope it's the latter.) Either way, enjoy this correction from The Salt Lake Tribune:

The police academy cadet who shot herself in the leg Thursday was Janet Vlaanderen. A story in Saturday's Tribune misspelled her name.

Ombudsmen round-up

• Paul Moore of The Baltimore Sun writes about a directive from the Maryland governor's press office banning all state officials from talking with two Sun journalists.
• Christine Chinlund of The Boston Globe writes about writing headlines.
• Jeffrey Dvorkin of NPR dips into the reader mail bag and comes up with some interesting letters.
• Daniel Okrent writes about arts listings in The Times and an organized effort in protest of the new "The Guide" section.
• Michael Arrieta-Walden of The Oregonian asks whether newspapers should publish photos of "illegal activity" or  "life-threatening actions"?
• Connie Coyne of The Salt Lake Tribune writes about how stories are chosen for the front page and invites the public to come sit in on the process.
• Don Sellar of The Toronto Star tries to correct an urban myth that grew out of information in a Star story.
• Michael Getler of The Washington Post writes about the difference between the online and print content of the paper, and an online cartoon that sent readers into a tizzy.

Another family misunderstanding

Report On Business Magazine is running a correction (not printed in its latest issue) that shows a lack of understanding when it comes to the history of its corporate sister. The error occurred when the magazine was describing the history of the CTV television network. Both ROB Magazine, which is published by The Globe and Mail, and CTV are part of the Bell Globemedia empire. Here's the correction:

The story "Local moguls sign off" in the December issue of Report on Business Magazine, included in most copies of today's Globe and Mail, incorrectly summarizes the history of the CTV network.
Members of the Bassett family sold their interest in Baton Broadcasting in 1984, although Douglas Bassett stayed on as CEO. Baton's successful efforts to gain control of the CTV network were directed initially by the Bassett family, and then by Ivan Fecan when he became Baton CEO in the mid-1990s.
Mr. Fecan engineered a complex series of buyouts of affiliated CTV stations and the acquisition of specialty holdings and new licences, transforming CTV from a 40-hours-per-week co-operative into a 24-hours-per-day national network. He is now CEO and president of Bell Globemedia, which owns CTV and The Globe and Mail.

Somebody at this paper hates fruit

The Ottawa Citizen runs a correction that shows the dangers of photo cropping (and junk food):

Due to an editing error, the photograph which accompanied a letter by Garry S. Fischl ("Students should snack less, exercise more," Nov. 26) left the incorrect impression about his views on nutritious snacks for his children in school.
The original photograph of Mr. Fischl and his sons showed him holding a bowl of fruit. In laying out the page, the fruit was cropped out of the picture, and only the bags of potato chips and candy being held by his sons were shown.
As a result of this error, Mr. Fischl has informed the Citizen that the picture as published "is not consistent with what my children consume for school snacks."

We Crunked: Regret corrections

Mistakes do indeed happen, and here are our flubs from this week. Thanks go out to Richard, Laughlin, Joseph, Patrick, Rod, Alexandra and Antonia for picking up the slack.

The Crunks:

• Our November 19 edition of  "We Crunked" misspelled the word "misspelled." It has been corrected. We regret the error, but love the irony. Some readers also pointed out that "samaritan" should be capitalized. Unfortunately, our blog software wouldn't let us capitalize it in the headline so we had to leave it cap-less throughout.
• Our November 19 post, "The skinny on Brokaw," contained an error in this sentence: "How does one go about getting a correction on skinny dipping?" The word "dipping" was misspelled as "sipping." It has been corrected. We regret the error.
• Our November 19 post, "Another drunken error," contained an error in this sentence: "...then a bunch of prosecutors are accused of abusing an open bar (it was a cash bar)." It originally read, "...an open a bar." The "a" has been deleted. We regret the error.
• Our November 22 post, "Clear Channel blasts Rolling Stone," contained an error in this sentence: "One would have expected them to at least print an edited version with a response from the writer."  The word "from" was originally published as "form." It has been corrected. We regret the error.
• Our November 24 post, "PR not immune to mistakes," contained an error in this sentence: "We give newspapers a lot of grief for their errors, but there is a whole other stream of daily corrections that we haven't yet given a working over: press releases." The word "their" was originally spelled "theirs." It has been corrected. We regret the error.
• Our November 25 post, "Another National Post columnist in hot water; Free Press columnist resigns," contained a significant error. The original post repeated the untrue and scurrilous allegation made by The National Post's Gillian Cosgrove. It's untrue and hurtful and shouldn't have been repeated. We regret the error.

Zero tolerance

Journalists are notoriously bad at math, and the volume of numerical and mathematical errors we see on correction pages is a frequent reminder of this unfortunate fact. Don't believe us? Well check out this correction in which The Toronto Star is forced to go back to zero:

Any number divided by zero is undefined, not zero as reported last Sunday in a Starship article about the number zero. Zero divided by zero is also undefined. The Star regrets the error.