Regret the Error

Disturbing trends

John Miller, a journalism professor at Ryerson University in Canada, wrote a scathing critique of newspapers and journalists in the Great White North for online magazine The Tyee. Among other information, it provides an interesting look at how The Hamilton Spectator is working to bring in new readers. But of particular interest to us is this statistic:

The number of readers who think news organizations try to cover up their mistakes rose from 13 percent in 1985 to 67 percent today.

The source of this alarming stat is The State of the News Media 2004 a  survey from the U.S.-based Project for Excellence in Journalism. Also of note is this other statistic:

The number of Americans who think news organizations generally get the facts straight declined from 55 to 35 percent.

Ouch. The authors identified eight major trends in the media and two of them relate to our area of interest (though neither explicitly mentions corrections):

Journalistic standards now vary even inside a single news organization. Companies are trying to reassemble and deliver to advertisers a mass audience for news not in one place, but across different programs, products and platforms. To do so, some are varying their news agenda, their rules on separating advertising from news and even their ethical standards...

Based on what we've seen, the same can be said for the correction/retraction standards at media organizations: very few correction policies are alike. (Though this is not a result of the business factors mentioned above.) We have also yet to see a newspaper chain bring forth a unified correction policy for all of its properties.

Those who would manipulate the press and public appear to be gaining leverage over the journalists who cover them. Several factors point in this direction. One is simple supply and demand. As more outlets compete for their information, it becomes a seller's market for information. Another is workload. The content analysis of the 24-hour-news outlets suggests that their stories contain fewer sources...

This trend has the potential to increase errors, since the media is increasingly relying on information provided by those with a vested interest in the topic. (Check this correction for an example of what we mean.) The issue then becomes whether an error will be caught before or after the fact -- or at all. After all, the most dangerous correction is the one that never runs.

Never too late

The New York Times just ran this correction, over four years after the fact:

A front-page article on July 1, 2000, about an increase in H.I.V. infections among gay men in San Francisco misstated the given name of the of the city's public health director. He is Dr. Mitchell H. Katz, not Michael. (A reader noted the error recently in an e-mail message.)

It highlights the fact that people often don't bother to notify papers about errors. Some might recall that one reason Jayson Blair got away with his fabrications in The Times was because the people he made things up about didn't see the need (or perhaps the point) to alert The Times about the mistakes. (We can recall one specific example where Blair wrote an error-filled description of a house and the residents didn't ask for a correction.)

Earn a correction from home!

This Washington Post correction reveals that somebody there didn't think too highly of Bernard B. Kerik's degree:

A Dec. 8 article on Bernard B. Kerik's nomination as secretary of homeland security misstated the reason he has not commented on allegations about him. Custom, rather than formal rules, prevents him from making such statements before his confirmation hearings. Also, a Dec. 4 article incorrectly described Kerik's bachelor's degree from Empire State College as "mail-order." He earned the degree by taking correspondence courses.

Killing two birds with one correction

This LA Times correction for a Joel Stein column contains everything you need for the holidays: a Presidential photo op, a turkey, and a former heroin addict.

Joel Stein — Stein's Dec. 5 column said a photo showed President Bush holding a fake Thanksgiving turkey during his 2003 visit to U.S. troops in Iraq. The turkey he was holding was real. Also, the name of Nicole Richie, co-star of "The Simple Life," was misspelled as Ritchie.

The hazards of government work

This correction highlights two important things:

1. It's always best to verify numbers from a company.
2. Working in the office of the Mexican attorney general sucks.

The correction:

In a Nov. 10 "Brave New World," Josh McHugh originally stated that 160 members of the Mexican attorney general's staff were implanted with RFID chips. While Applied Digital Solutions, the company that makes the chips, has circulated the 160 figure, a spokeswoman for the Mexican attorney general's office now says that only 18 staffers received chip implants.

Party like a Christian club promoter

A Salon.com photo cutline managed to convert two Ibiza club promoters into Christian missionaries last week. Here's a correction that ran the same day as the story:

The cover image that originally ran with "Christian Party Animals," published Dec. 10, portrayed three women who were incorrectly identified as members of the 24-7 Prayer team, a Christian missionary group. In fact, they were club promoters. Salon regrets the error.

Ombudsmen Round-Up

• Paul Moore of The Baltimore Sun writes about the decision to run a series about a "Japanese-American family's search for its identity in the context of internment camps" after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and then publish it on the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
• Christine Chinlund of The Boston Globe writes about charges that the paper has given unfair coverage to the Big Dig, and also comments on fact checking in op-ed articles.
• Jeffrey A. Dvorkin of NPR explains what an ombudsman does, responds to charges he has "gone soft" on NPR, and reveals some of his upcoming topics.
• Daniel Okrent of The New York Times says The Times should spend a bit more time talking about The Times.
• Michael Arrieta-Walden of The Oregonian writes about the paper's decision to drop the Dear Abby column.
• Connie Coyne of the Salt Lake Tribune writes about what it takes to write humor, and why it seems to be missing from newspapers.
• Don Sellar of The Toronto Star offers readers the chance to take the "Nitpicker's Quiz."
• Michael Getler of The Washington Post reviews recent stories that elicited feedback from readers.

We Crunked: Regret corrections

Oh how time flies when you're messing up. Time again for this week's Crunks, which have a lot to do with last week's Crunks. Thanks to Stephanie, Joshua, Tyler, Katie and Brian for keeping us humble.

The Crunks

• Our December 3 edition of "We Crunked: Regret corrections" contained two errors. The sentence, "Our November 25 post, "Eat your hearts out, Strunk & White," misspelled the word grammar..." originally had the word "our" in place of "out." Also, there was a grammatical error in this Crunk: "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." The second "we" in the last sentence was not in the original post. Both mistakes have been corrected. We regret the errors.
• Our December 3 post,"One testy correction," said the correction came from the Manchester Guardian. Although this was the title of the publication listed by the New Yorker, which originally brought the correction our attention, the correct name of the newspaper is The Guardian. It has been corrected. We regret the error.
• Our December 8 post, "NY Times editors ride the subway!," originally has the word "form" in the place of "from" in this sentence: "If we were from New York we could add in some West Side/No. 2 humor here..." It has been corrected. We regret the error.
• Our December 8 Post, "Helpful holiday hints for the private pond owner," contained two errors. The words "avert" and "potential" were both misspelled. They have been corrected. We regret the errors.
• Our December 9 post, "Keep guessing...," incorrectly used the phrase "begs more questions than it answers." As Brian, a reader, helpfully pointed out, "Begging the question is a logical fallacy wherein you take for granted or assume the thing that you are setting out to prove." The post has now been changed to read: "This Washington Post correction raises more questions than it answers." We regret the error.

Letting the bias shine through

Reporters always love it when they work hard to balance a story, only to have an editor unbalance it in a headline or cutline. Like this:

A story on Monday's front page about Wal-Mart's interest in big cities was accompanied by a highlights box that said one possibility -- a Wal-Mart on former LTV Corp. property -- would be a "symbolic victory" for the city. The box, written by an editor, did not reflect the tone of the story, which noted both pro- and anti-Wal-Mart sentiment.

Potty mouth

Clearly, the only reason we're using this correction from The Journal Sentinel is because involves Dave Barry and a "potty poncho." Now if we can just get Robert Novak and a "Chia Pet" together, it would truly be Christmas

The hot dog cooker mentioned in humorist Dave Barry's gift guide in today's Lifestyle section is temporarily unavailable. Also, the current price of the potty poncho mentioned in Barry's gift guide is $19.95. The Lifestyle section is printed in advance; these changes were announced after the section was printed.