Regret the Error

We Crunked: Regret corrections

Once again, it's fuckup time here in Regret land. Enjoy this weekly listing of our mistakes. Special thanks to Raeanne, Kevin and Jensen for making us look stupid.

The Crunks:
-Our October 13 post, "On corrections" misspelled the Detroit Free Press as "The Detroit Freep Press." It has been corrected. We regret the error.

-Our October 28 post, "Iraq: not as corrupt as you think" included an "it's" when it should have been an "its." It has been corrected. We regret the error, especially because it was spotted by our editor at a Canadian magazine and it makes us look like we can't no write.

-Our sidebar, "Newspaper Corrections" incorrectly listed the Austin American-Statesman as the "Austin Statesman." It has been corrected. We regret the error.

Never a dull correction at The Stranger

Searching for corrections on The Stranger's site bears much delicious fruit. While their corrections may not be the most professional in the business, they are certainly the most entertaining.
Peep this one from a while back:

DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS: In that same "Explain that Sore" article mentioned above, it was stated that a vaccine exists for Hepatitis C when, in fact, there isn't one. We regret the error, of course. Actually, we more than regret the error. We regret run-of-the-mill errors, but this error mortified us. The editor of The Stranger, Dan Savage, is a friggin' sex writer, after all. Why didn't he spot the error? Because he didn't READ THE PIECE! Can you believe it? Sean Nelson edited the Back to School Issue, and Savage figured he didn't even have to give it glance. God, what a dumb asshole.

Or this little gem:

DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS: Last week, we misspelled Kim Chi Bistro in our Chow section ["Authentic Korean on the Hill," Jan 16]. We regret the error. Our food editor is dumb.

Or this puzzler:

Stranger music editor Jennifer Maerz regrets drinking [blank] and [blanking] on her coffee table in heels at a Christmas party, fracturing her [blank] and making it very difficult to [blank] for four to six weeks.

Find your own by doing a search here or by checking out their corrections round-up page here.

Skippy!

This is what it's like to be the Orlando Sentinel, the paper of record in the land of Walt Disney World:

An article on Page 19 of Monday's Central Florida Business section about the new Stitch's Great Escape attraction at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom misidentified the big-eyed alien prisoner who appears in the attraction. The character's name is Skippy.

...or to print ambiguous headlines about the Bush administration:

A headline on Page A3 Saturday accompanying an article about a campaign at the United Nations for a global treaty to ban embryonic-stem-cell research left unclear that the Bush administration has supported some forms of stem-cell research.

Chicago Tribune or George Carlin?

Early Tuesday morning, several top editors from the Chicago Tribune were hard at work removing a section from that day's paper. Once you can get past the image of highly-paid newspaper folks on their hands and knees physically yanking a section out of thousands of copies, the question of "why" becomes important. The answer: because some c*ck let a story get on the front page of the WomanNews section with a headline that included the word "c_nt". That's right: they were talking about the word "cunt" and decided to give the story a saucy headline. Give credit to the Wall Street Journal for getting the story:

The article, which ran under the headline "You c_nt say that," was cleared by editors Geoff Brown and Cassandra West, who oversee the paper's Wednesday WomanNews section. Tribune editors said Ms. Lipinski discovered the story was slated to run at the newspaper's regular morning editorial meeting, but the section had already been preprinted ahead of the daily press run. A spokeswoman for the newspaper said a "very nominal" number of subscribers received the story and declined to comment on any possible disciplinary action as a result of the incident. She said the paper's public editor, who addresses reader issues, plans to address the situation in a future column.

An editor's note in today's edition offered an apology. "Senior editors determined that the story was inappropriate after the preprinted section went to press. Most copies were removed from Wednesday's edition of the paper, though a relatively small number of copies may still contain it. A new version of the section was printed in time to be distributed to a substantial number of readers today. Those who did not receive the revised section will find it in Thursday's Tribune. The Tribune regrets any offense and inconvenience to its readers."

Our favorite line in the story, however, is this: "Tribune editors said Teamster employees eventually forced them to stop pulling the section late last night because they needed to start printing another newspaper." You know it's serious when the teamsters step in because they want to work.

Iraq: not as corrupt as you think

Harper's, the venerable old mag of found content and future telling, made a booboo in its "Weekly Review" newsletter by calling Iraq "...the most corrupt country on Earth." Senior editor and Review writer Roger D. Hodge sent this correction to subscribers:

"In today's Weekly Review I stated that "Transparency International announced that Iraq is now the most corrupt country on Earth." This is an error. In fact, Iraq scored 2.1 on TI's corruption index, along with Cameroon, Kenya, and Pakistan. Sixteen countries received lower scores. Bangladesh and Haiti were the most corrupt with a score of 1.5."

Maybe they'll eventually put it up on Harper's corrections page, which currently reads like it is computer generated. (It is.)

Murdoch: just look at our slogan!

Gawker discovered this correction from the Wall Street Journal:

NEWS CORP.'S Fox News was incorrectly described in a page-one article Monday as being sympathetic to the Bush cause.

...and then points us to an AFP story where Murdoch says Fox News isn't biased, but his newspapers will continue to support Bush's foreign policy. As for charges of bias, Murdoch knocks them out of the park with this 1+1 = 1 answer: "We're not in the least bit biased, we're a fair and balanced company, our slogan is fair and balanced."

Slate also has an interesting take on the correction. (And, to be fair, it looks like they noticed it first.)

Ananova takes the cake

These things never happened: Bill Clinton shilling for a Chinese men's clothing label, Diana Ross getting engaged to David Gest, or Indian scientists inventing a robot to help couples with their sex lives. Again: none of these things happened, but UK news site Ananova reported all of them and then published corrections. We can't put our brutish North American finger on it, but there's something about the way the corrections and apologies are written on Ananova that makes it seem like they are written with a fist firmly planted in cheek. You decide:

Rowan Atkinson - an apology
On December 31, 2003, we published an article entitled: "Rowan Atkinson 'treated for depression'" where we wrongly reported that Rowan Atkinson had spent time in an Arizona clinic to receive treatment for depression.
In fact Rowan Atkinson is not and has never suffered from depression (severe or otherwise) and did not spend time at an Arizona clinic to receive treatment for depression.
We apologise to Rowan Atkinson and are happy to put the record straight.

Or this one:

Rasta Pasta was never on the menu
A story published on August 31 stated a Wakefield headteacher had been criticised for introducing a dish called Rasta Pasta to school menus during a project on race.
Ananova has since discovered the entire detail of the article was false and arose from a supply of bogus information to us.
We are happy to confirm the school had no such dish on its menu and that no story stating it did have has been published by the Wakefield Express newspaper.
We are happy to apologise to the school quoted in the article, Horbury Junior School, Wakefield Council and the Wakefield Express.

These notes are simultaneously the most apologetic and nasty corrections we have ever read. Oh, you mean that wasn't you assaulting a blind man with a stolen crtuch? We'd really like to apologize about saying you just assaulted a blind man with a stolen crutch. Just so we're clear: you had nothing to do with assaulting that blind chap with the nicked crutch. Terrible sorry about that. Fancy a shag, you blind beater?

Prickly City: the saga continues

This one just won't die. The link that was originally published in a Prickly City comic and then hijacked by a bestiality pornographer has now been redirected to...the John Kerry site. (Follow the trail here.) So it looks like Kerry has the pornographer vote all wrapped up. Test it out for yourself: http://www.coyotepac.org. With thanks to Joshua for pointing this out.

The pubic presidency

The Christian Science Monitor is currently running a column, "We need higher quality outrage" that reveals President Bush is using September 11 in shocking (sexy?) ways.

Let the countdown to correction begin! Unless, of course, this is part of the October surprise we have all been waiting for. Damn you, Karl Rove. Update at 2:30 p.m., Oct. 27: The article has been corrected.

You might not want to piss this guy off

We spent a bit of time with Salon's corrections page and discovered this frightening correction from August:

In the Aug. 25 "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" we reported that Joe Loya had stabbed his father with a ballpoint pen, when in fact it was a steak knife. The story also said that he'd bit off the ear of his fellow inmate, when it was just part of his ear; and that he is 44 instead of 43. The story has been corrected.

Run for your lives.