Regret the Error
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January 27, 2011 02:34 PM
A New Commitment to Transparency at ESPN
Network to codify its standards and practices
In October the National Republican Congressional Committee sent an e-mail to supporters that was signed by former Notre Dame football coach and current ESPN contributor Lou Holtz.
“My friend, YOU, are the NRCC’s 12th man and they urgently need your help to win every U.S. House seat possible, fire Nancy Pelosi, and elect a Republican to the Speaker’s chair...
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January 21, 2011 12:39 PM
Q & A: Stephen Abell
Talking with the director of the U.K.’s Press Complaints Commission
In late December, British tabloid The Sun published a correction to a sensational story it had writ large on the front page:
Further to our article about increased security at Coronation Street's studios for their live 50th anniversary episode ... we would like to make clear that while cast and crew were subject to full body searches, there was...
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January 14, 2011 11:13 AM
To Delete or Not to Delete?
Should news organizations and reporters delete erroneous tweets?
One of the long-standing accuracy debates in journalism centers around whether you should repeat the original error in a correction. I examined this issue two years ago, and I support repeating the mistake in order to ensure people understand the nature of the error.
That issue will likely never be settled, as different news organizations embrace different policies...
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January 7, 2011 11:51 AM
Cable Access
Once again: WikiLeaks did not publicly release 250,000 diplomatic cables
[Update: Craig Silverman elaborates on this column in a new CJR podcast, which you can listen to elsewhere on CJR.org here, or via iTunes here.]
Time for a pop quiz: How many of the leaked diplomatic cables in WikiLeaks’s possession has the organization released publicly?
A) Roughly 2,000
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B) Roughly 250,000
C) None.... -
December 17, 2010 11:34 AM
Regret the Error’s Year in Review
The top quotes and takeaways from a year’s worth of columns
Close to fifty columns later, 2010 is coming to an end for Regret the Error. I spent this week looking over the interviews and links that I collected in order to tease out the most notable quotes from a year in the life of this column. Below are the results of my digging: a collection of comments that speak to...
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December 10, 2010 09:50 AM
RTE’s Error of the Year
And other highlights from the year in corrections, retractions, and apologia
It’s been a very stressful couple of weeks.
Every year at this time, I publish the Year in Media Errors and Corrections on Regret the Error, a catalogue of the best of the worst in journalism mistakes and fixes. My equivalent to the Oscar for Best Picture is the Error of the Year and the Correction of the Year....
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December 3, 2010 09:59 AM
Q&A;: Blur Author Tom Rosenstiel
On verification and critical thinking in the new, open journalistic era
In their 2001 book, The Elements of Journalism Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach list ten fundamental principles (“elements”) that make up journalism, and number four was, “Its essence is a discipline of verification.”
Their latest offering, Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload goes beyond what journalists need to know and practice by...
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November 19, 2010 11:35 AM
The Authenticity Contest
Knight News Challenge solicits authenticity-related projects
Accuracy is hot stuff these days, let me tell you.
On Wednesday, Thomas Friedman of The New York Times dedicated a column to the correction of a rumor, and recent weeks have seen viral corrections and apologies, surveys of online corrections and new accuracy-related products come to market.
But perhaps the best development this year...
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November 12, 2010 11:13 AM
The State of Online Corrections
News sites lag far behind print and broadcast outlets
In July, the media error reporting serviceMediaBugs released a survey that revealed twenty-one out of twenty-eight Bay Area news websites don’t offer a corrections link, and that seventeen of the twenty-eight “have no corrections policy or substantive corrections content at all.”
In addition to pointing out the failings of the Bay Area media covered in the survey, MediaBugs...
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November 5, 2010 11:23 AM
Star Trek Insurrection
Commenters force news site to admit “Patrick Stewart is a handsome man”
“We're sorry for claiming Captain Kirk was in command of Captain Picard's starship,” reads the headline on a rather remarkable apology issued this week by News.com.au, the Australian news portal owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Look just below the headline and you’re treated to a grainy image of the venerable Captain Jean Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise flipping...
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October 25, 2010 03:20 PM
A Fact Check Box on Every Page
The Register Citizen continues its digital transformation
The Register Citizen is an 8,000-circulation paper serving Litchfield County, Conn. It’s owned by the Journal Register Company, which is engaged in a rather radical process of transformation with the goal of turning it into a digital-first news organization that embraces the new world of media. That focus is evidenced by the fact that the Citizen now draws 140,000...
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October 15, 2010 11:54 AM
TBD and the Accuracy Boast
The aftermath of the typo heard 'round the world
It's a rare and wonderful thing to see a news organization criticized for making too big of a deal about an error and correction made by one of its writers. The issue is usually the opposite--a call for transparency, rather than a plea to, well, shut up. But here we are, thanks to a now-famous correction published by D.C....
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October 8, 2010 11:09 AM
I Can Haz Media Fails?
ProbablyBadNews.com becomes part of the FAIL Blog
Earlier this week I directed my web browser to ProbablyBadNews.com, the website launched by the Cheezburger Network, those able purveyors of lolcats and related memery, last year to highlight different categories of journalistic error. I was shocked to see that the standalone site was gone and I was instead redirected to a subsection of the FAIL Blog. Probably...
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October 1, 2010 01:05 PM
Gawker Ranks the Rumor Mills
Accuracy and credibility in celebrity journalism
Contrary to what you may have read, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are still together. John Mayer and Jennifer Anniston are not. Neither are Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, however, are still together, though they haven’t gotten married or conceived a child.
Break-ups, pregnancies, marriages—these are some of the major markers of life, and the...
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Desks
The Audit Business
- The WSJ’s Balanced Look at Muni Risk And the FT adds some helpful data
- Audit Notes: Toxic Assets, Foreclosure Mills, SEC (Finally) Looking at CDOs
The Observatory Science
- Snow Job Just what constitutes a “record”?
- The Cost of Living, Part IV Digital mammograms in the medical marketplace
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- Priceless: Representative Lee’s flexy photo
- After AOL/HuffPo Merger, a Columnist Jumps Ship Politics Daily’s Matt Lewis won’t work for Arianna
