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An Editor's note:
A headline in yesterday's City & Region section on a story about the return to Logan Airport of the body of an American soldier who died of wounds suffered in Iraq used quotation marks around the word hero. The headline should have made clear that quotation marks were being used because the pilot of the plane had announced to passengers that a hero was on board. Without that context, the headline appeared to call into question the soldier's heroism.
They can't get a fair shake from the media:
The Sept. 16 Column One incorrectly attributed the shooting of two men and an infant in the San Bernardino County community of Mentone to an order from the Mexican Mafia. The motive for the shooting is under investigation, but it is believed to be related to a dispute between the shooter and one of the victims from years earlier.
It took an awful lot of complaining and cajoling, but The New York Times has run an Editor's Note about the phantom "nudge." (Background here.) It looks like public editor Byron Calame's highly critical column turned the tide, as it should have. Here it is:
The TV Watch column on Sept. 5 discussed broadcast journalists' undisguised outrage at the failings of Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts. It said reporters had helped stranded victims because no police officers or rescue workers were around, and added, "Fox's Geraldo Rivera did his rivals one better: yesterday, he nudged an Air Force rescue worker out of the way so his camera crew could tape him as he helped lift an older woman in a wheelchair to safety."
The editors understood the "nudge" comment as the television critic's figurative reference to Mr. Rivera's flamboyant intervention. Mr. Rivera complained, but after reviewing a tape of his broadcast, The Times declined to publish a correction.
Numerous readers, however - now including Byron Calame, the newspaper's public editor, who also scrutinized the tape - read the comment as a factual assertion. The Times acknowledges that no nudge was visible on the broadcast.
The Times was right to make this an Editor's Note, its highest level of correction below an all-out retraction. But we still can't help thinking that the second to last paragraph comes off sounding a little pathetic. How can a nudge be "figurative" when it is said in the context of describing one person literally moving another out of the way? Along those lines, FishBowlNY offers up a definition of "nudge." But it's over. Geraldo has his well-deserved correction and perhaps the Times has learned that it is better to error on the side of correction.
In The Beacon's article "New campus
club gives voice to sexuality issues" (9.19.05), Raquel Whelby,
sophomore, was identified as one of two student leaders for the Free
Spirit Gay and Straight Alliance club. While Whelby was not identified
in the article as a lesbian, Beacon editors were made aware
that some readers jumped to this conclusion. In fact, Whelby is
considered an "ally" and is a student leader for the straight alliance
component to the group.
In addition, the group was
misidentified as the "Free Spirited Gay and Straight Alliance." The
correct title for the group is "Free Spirit Gay and Straight Alliance."
Link
From a newspaper in Coos Bay, Oregon:
A Sept. 20 Page 2 Police Brief item on Page A2 on Tuesday should have identified Andrea Hongell of North Bend as the reporting party of a fourth-degree assault.
On 18 August Cayman Net News published an article, which, reported that Joseph Anthony Betty had been found guilty of the offences of consumption of ganja and possession of cocaine in a court appearance.
This was incorrect.
The article should have read that Mr Betty had merely been charged with the offence, not that he had been found guilty. Mr Betty has in fact pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Cayman Net News would like to offer its sincerest apologies to Mr Betty for this error and any inconvenience or embarrassment this may have caused him.
This is deliciously nasty:
Last Sunday I implied StretchMark Durden- Smith wouldn't be presenting ITV2's I'm A Celebrity coverage because bosses didn't want to pay for his airplane seat(s). It has since transpired it's actually because his wife is expecting twins and is busily eating for three as we speak.
So lovely when couples have something in common.
This week's edition of the New York Times Book Review has an interesting essay about corrections, and the lack thereof, in books. No doubt the article was inspired by Seth Mnookin's decision to include corrections in the paperback version of his book. (You can read our interview with him here.) The article has one particularly interesting section about how uncorrected errors can continue to be repeated for decades:
But even small errors can lead to large problems. "The historical error can be very much like the virus that spreads from book to book," Chernow said. He cites a line attributed to Hamilton in books for 150 years - "Your people, sir - your people is a great beast!" - which he said has since been shown to be hearsay reported 71 years after it was supposedly uttered.
Falsehoods like these seep into the record, infecting newspapers and magazines, which often rely on books as main sources. Marshall said that when an excerpt from her book was published in The New Yorker, the magazine's fact-checkers relied heavily on books she knew were flawed. "Any book already in print they considered authoritative," she said, "but because my book was not in print it was not given the same credibility."
We would also be remiss if we neglected to point out that this article has a correction of its own:
An essay on Page 39 of the Book Review today, about books with errors that are not corrected, misidentified the American publisher that withdrew "Honor Lost," ostensibly a memoir about a Jordanian woman murdered for having married a Christian. It was published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc., not Simon & Schuster (which is another division of the parent corporation, Simon & Schuster Inc.). Link
The Globe ran a lengthy editor's note in its Saturday edition that admits to some serious flaws in a front page story from late August. We looked on the paper's site and in the Factiva database and couldn't locate the story in question. Perhaps the paper has removed it. If that's the case then the Globe should clearly state that the article has been retracted. UPDATE: The story is still in the Globe's archives. Subscribers can read it here. Also, check out Dan Kennedy's post about the article on his Media Nation blog here.
It looks as though this is a case of the paper failing to do the proper legwork and reporting to verify its story. It also appears that quotes from a poorly selected translator may be false or, at the very least, "in dispute," according to the paper. It would be appropriate for the Globe to offer a bit more detail as to what, specifically, is "in dispute." It also should have included an official comment from the organization in question, since the original story did not offer them the opportunity to respond to some of the allegations.
Editor's note: A Page One story Aug. 26 detailing allegations that the International Rescue Committee's resettlement program for Somali Bantus in Boston has provided inadequate assistance to the refugees failed to meet Globe reporting standards in several areas. The story relied on the accounts of two former IRC employees and four families in the approximately 140-refugee community and did not present enough context about the broader refugee experience for the reader to judge how prevalent the alleged problems were.
In addition, IRC officials were not given the opportunity to respond to specific allegations. For instance, a woman who was described as descending into dementia without medical care was seen regularly by doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital, according to the IRC. Her apartment was described as ''urine soaked," but the story did not detail the IRC's efforts to help maintain the apartment. In another case, a struggling family was provided with 18 months of rent and more than $15,000 in other support, according to the IRC.
In addition, the translator hired by the Globe to assist with interviews of the refugees was arranged by the ex-employees who had brought the complaints to the Globe's attention. An independent translator should have been retained. After publication of the story, the translator gave conflicting accounts to the Globe and to IRC officials of how he had translated several statements made by refugees in interviews for the story. As a result, several key assertions by refugees remain in dispute.
An incorrect figure for the agency's annual budget last year was given; it was $163 million. An incorrect job title for one of the ex-workers was given; Eliza Castaneda was a part-time program manager.
New York Times public editor Byron Calame seems to have found his voice with a column about the Geraldo Rivera/Alessandra Stanley dispute. Calame watched the video footage in question and says there was no
"nudge," meaning that Stanley's description of one is
false. Executive editor Bill Keller's response to Calame seems to admit this. [UPDATE: The Times published an Editor's Note on September 27 that acknowledged there was no nudge. More here.] Here's what Calame quotes him as writing:
..."frankly," that in light of Mr. Rivera's reaction to the review, Ms. Stanley "would have been justified in assuming" - and therefore writing, apparently - that Mr. Rivera used "brute force" rather than merely a "nudge" on Sept. 4.
Calame says it's "disturbing" that Keller seems to imply that Geraldo's "bad behavior essentially entitles the paper to rely on assumptions and refuse to correct an unsupported fact." More from Keller:
...Mr. Keller's final reason for rejecting a correction was that Ms. Stanley, "who is writing as a critic, with the license that title brings - was within bounds in her judgment." He elaborated: "Ms. Stanley's point was that Mr. Rivera was show-boating - that he was being pushy, if not literally pushing - and I think an impartial viewer of the footage will see it that way."
Based on the videotape and outtakes I saw, Ms. Stanley certainly would have been entitled to opine that Mr. Rivera's actions were showboating or pushy. But a "nudge" is a fact, not an opinion. And even critics need to keep facts distinct from opinions.
Calame also uses the column to draw attention to his ongoing dispute with Times columnist Paul Krugman (background here).
Meanwhile, in the opinion section of The Times, the corrections policy of Gail Collins, the editor of the editorial page, is not being fully enforced. As I have written on my Web journal, Paul Krugman has not been required to correct, in the paper, recent acknowledged factual errors in his column about the 2000 election in Florida.
The Times has long been a trailblazer in its commitment to correcting errors. This is no time to let those standards slip - even when well-known critics and columnists are involved.
The Times owes Geraldo a correction. It seems clear, however, that he won't get one. This is conduct unworthy of the Times and it only emboldens its critics. Expect this episode to become a frequently-cited example of the Times' supposed liberal bias and unaccountability. It didn't need to end up this way.
Calame ends the column by drawing attention to what appears to be an inconsistent application of the Times' corrections policy. Smaller errors such as misspellings or wrong dates are supposed to fall under the heading "For the Record," while more substantive errors run under the "Corrections" heading. It doesn't always work out tht way. Here's what Calame concludes:
Based on the last 30 days, my sense is that many of the errors falling between the two definitions are being treated as "For the Record" corrections.
The one-year mark could be a good time for the veteran editors who handle corrections to apply their long experience to a review of the existing definitions. I hope they would give serious consideration to broadening the definitions as a way to reduce the gap between them.
I would like to see the substantive category expanded to include errors that have practical importance for readers. If there's an error in information that seems likely to become the basis for action or decision-making by more than a few dozen readers, I think it deserves the prominence offered by the current substantive category. One of the fine-tuning chores, of course, would be to calibrate how many users of the information should be required to qualify for greater prominence.
