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The Times reminds of a time when Gap dresses, not invading forces, captured hearts and minds:
An article on Jan. 16 about the way presidents fare in their second terms misstated the reason Bill Clinton was impeached. He was accused of perjury and obstruction of justice, not of having an affair with an intern.
The Trib has run a rather lengthy correction over a story that ran over two months ago. Better late than never? Sure. Better sooner than later? Please.
The Nov. 21, 2004, article headlined "Poor live in housing nightmare while investors reap benefits" may have given the impression that Cecil C. Butler is sole owner of 1,200 apartments in Lawndale. In fact, the legal owner of the apartments is the Lawndale Restoration Limited Partnership. Butler is the president of the general partner responsible for the management of the partnership's affairs. Butler has served as signatory for partnerships, management agreements and financings for the apartments dating to the 1970s.
The article incorrectly said that Butler departed as president of Community Bank of Lawndale in 1985 amid bookkeeping problems. Butler left to avoid conflict of interest questions from regulators after the bank issued loans to Lawndale Restoration Properties.
The article was imprecise when it stated that investors "leveraged" the Lawndale apartments to buy Gold Coast condominiums. No debt was incurred on the Lawndale apartments to complete the Gold Coast purchase. Investors exchanged tax benefits from the Lawndale apartments to the Gold Coast condos.
Also, a headline in the article incorrectly stated that $150 million in federal funds was meant to repair the apartments. In fact, the funds were mostly rent payments meant to cover mortgage payments, operating costs and routine maintenance. Other federally insured loan funds were used for repairs.
The New York Times is in hot water over a recent story about an obesity epidemic among adults in Brazil. The story was apparently fine but there appears to be a problem with the photographs accompanying it -- the "fat" Brazilians they show are not Brazilian. The New York Post ran an item about it:
In yesterday's story in [Brazilian newspaper] O Globo, in Rio de Janeiro, one of the women in the photo, Milena Suchoparkova said she was born in the Czech Republic and holds an Italian passport. She visits Brazil for a few months each year.
And she says she is outraged that she was depicted as a fat Brazilian. She calls the reporter Rohter and the photographer Maier "cretins."
She said when she gets back to Prague she plans to hire a lawyer to sue to The Times. She said she has written a letter, but had not heard back from the newspaper.
And The Times has run a correction:
An International Journal article from Rio de Janeiro on Jan. 13 described a Brazilian government study's finding that the country faced an obesity epidemic, with 40 percent of the adult population overweight. The article talked about the anomaly of obesity in a body-conscious society known to the world for beaches, bikinis and the girl from Ipanema.Two photographs with the article showed overweight people at Brazilian beaches. The photographer, a freelance who worked independently from the writer, believed that all the people he photographed were Brazilians. But three women in one picture have now told the newspaper O Globo that they were visitors from Europe. While the article itself has not been questioned, The Times regrets that the nationalities of the women in the photo were not verified.
We're not exactly in a strong position when it comes to pointing out grammatical errors (go here and laugh at our stupidity). But this NPR correction is in need of a little sentence fragment repair. Also, we're left wondering what part of the piece was omitted?
A correction involving Sylvia Poggioli's recent story on a newly uncovered Vatican directive instructing French Catholic authorities not to return baptized Jewish children to their parents after World War II. A section of the piece was inadvertently omitted during production. As a result, the piece failed to adequately represent the views of Catholics advocating the beatification of Pius XII, the pope who approved the document.
The Grumman Hellcat was the F-6F. The Grumman Wildcat was the F-4F. A front-page story Monday contained an error.
...and this correction contains very little helpful information.
The venerable British Medical Journal has published a correction and apology in its latest issue. The BMJ runs corrections on a regular basis (its former editor even penned a column on the topic), but this one attracted more attention because the original article (link goes to an excerpt only) caused quite a stir. Now the correction and apology is doing the same. Here it is:
An article by Jeanne Lenzer in our 1 January issue (BMJ 2005;330:7) reported that the US Food and Drug Administration was to review confidential Eli Lilly documents that had been sent to the BMJ by an anonymous source.
The article stated that these documents had gone "missing" during a 1994 product liability suit filed against Eli Lilly.
That statement has been the subject of a detailed investigation conducted by the BMJ following a complaint by Eli Lilly. That investigation has revealed that all of the documents supplied to the BMJ that were either Eli Lilly documents or were in the hands of Eli Lilly had in fact been disclosed during the suit.
At the end of the trial, all the documents were preserved by Court Order or were disclosed by Eli Lilly to the plaintiffs' lawyers in related Prozac claims.
The BMJ did not intend to suggest that Eli Lilly caused these documents to go missing. As a result of the investigation, it is clear that these documents did not go missing. The BMJ accepts that Eli Lilly acted properly in relation to the disclosure of these documents in these claims. The BMJ is happy to set the record straight and to apologise to Eli Lilly for this statement, which we now retract, but which we published in good faith.
The same article described Dr Peter Breggin as "the medical witness for the Wesbecker case." He was, in fact, the expert witness for the plaintiffs.
Yesterday's edition of The Guardian featured a trio of embarrassing and notable corrections:
In a column devoted to the law, page 17, G2, yesterday, we referred to a court decision in the United States against "the company that has the beer concession at the Giants' baseball stadium in New York ..." The Giants baseball team moved to San Francisco more than 40 years ago. The stadium is actually in New Jersey, not New York. American football and soccer are played there but not baseball. The company involved in the court case is Aramark, not Aramak.
In the lead report in our International section, Survivors and leaders travel to Auschwitz, page 13, yesterday, an editing slip made Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate, female. It was corrected yesterday on the Guardian website.
In the Auschwitz report, page 13, yesterday, we referred to "all three living former US presidents, Bill Clinton, George Bush senior, and Jimmy Carter". President Gerald Ford is also living.
Is this a dig at the quality of public servants? The governor's math skills?
A Wednesday front page story about the governor's budget incorrectly said that Gov. RIck Perry submitted a budget full of dollars in 2003. It should have said a budget full of zeroes.
When the Seattle Post-Intelligencer corrects an article online, there's usually an Editor's Note inserted in the piece to highlight the error and the correct information. Most of the time, this offers readers the necessary information. But a Note contained within this Couch Slouch football column leaves us wondering:
Editor's Note: A paragraph in questionable taste was removed from the original version of this column at this point.
Fortunately, the Couch Slouch is syndicated. And what was "questionable" in Seattle was, apparently, just fine in Houston. The Houston Chronicle ran the offending paragraph, and here it is:
At the NFC Championship Game, a half-frozen 10-year-old sang the national anthem before the Falcons played the Eagles. I hate to nitpick, but some adult was whispering the words into his ear! It felt like the presidential debates all over again.
Questionable taste or questionable editing?
