Regret the Error

Paper fires reporter for "self-plagiarism"

Romenesko spotted a strange case of "self-plagiarism" yesterday: a reporter for the Explorer, weekly paper in Arizona, was fired after he/she was found to have taken a story written for a journalism class and, with a few minor updates, passed it off as new work. Aside from the dishonesty, one of the problems was that the piece was outdated and therefore contained inaccurate information. From the paper:

The EXPLORER newsroom has been coming to grips with this over the past several days after discovering that a staffer engaged in an act that can best be described as self-plagiarism.
The story that appeared in last week’s paper about pet accommodations at the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort was a recycled work.
The employee, who is no longer employed here, originally wrote it for a college journalism class and presented it as new material.
While the story received marginal updating, the staffer retained quotes from the original piece. The concierge quoted in the story no longer works at the resort. The story accurately reflected that another source for the original story is now working in a different department at the resort.

Later in the article:

What happened to us, and to you, last week was a breach of trust on several levels — first in the relationship between a writer and the editors, then in the relationship between this newspaper and the readers who invite us into their homes every week.
And in the news business, trust isn’t just earned once. Every week, we put our credibility on the line.
We’ve reviewed the editing process, and there really was nothing that would have told us that there was a factual problem with this story — no quotes that seemed “too good,” nothing seeming out of place.
So where do we go from here?
We will review other stories this person has written for us, and if further correcfions are needed, we will publish them.
We have also talked with the news staff this week and explained that this kind of performance is intolerable.
We apologize. We got it wrong in a big way by the standards of a community newspaper, and we are sorry. We can and will do better.

As we've previously explained, it's important that the paper name the offending reporter.

Guardian apologizes for plagiarizing from Russian newspaper

A short introduction to an article about Russian oligarchs included three paragraphs that were substantially similar to paragraphs contained in the introduction to another, earlier, article, published in May, in the Exile - an English-language newspaper based in Moscow. We should not have used material from the Exile in our introduction without quoting and crediting it properly and we apologise to the Exile for this error. (The richer they come. . ., page 7, G2, July 7). Link

That's plagiarism. So how did it happen? Was any disciplinary action taken? One would expect more than a regular correction for something of this nature.

UPDATED: Rossiya's Titanic error

A 13 year-old boy in Finland might have a promising career as a fact checker ahead of him.
Last week he revealed that the image of a submarine used by state-owned Russian TV network Rossiya (RTR) to illustrate a story about a Russian submarine voyage to the arctic was in fact from the film Titanic. The image was then distributed by Reuters, which meant it spread to news outlets in countries around the world. That's the danger of picking up reports from other media without doing independent verification. It's something wire services constantly struggle with, and occasionally they get bit.
"I was looking at the photo of the Russian sub expedition and I noticed immediately that there was something familiar about the picture," Waltteri Seretin, the Finnish boy, told a Finnish paper. "I checked it with my DVD and there it was right there in the beginning of the movie: exactly the same image of the submer-sibles approaching the ship."
Here's the official statement from Reuters, and a correction from MSNBC.com below. We have not seen other corrections as of now, which is troubling to say the least.

On August 2, 2007 in a TV story about two Russian submersibles planting a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, we used file shots of MIR submersibles as part of this story.
Reuters mistakenly identified this file footage as originating from the Arctic, and not the North Atlantic where the footage was shot.
This footage was taken during the search for the Titanic and copyright is held by Russian State broadcaster RTR.
This location error was corrected as soon as it was brought to our attention. A still image of the submersibles was also taken from the footage and put out on the Reuters photo wire. The caption has been corrected.

This correction was published on MSNBC.com:

In an Aug. 2 story about Russia planting a flag at the bottom of the North Pole, Reuters provided a photo with a caption identifying a submersible as participating in the expedition. Reuters later corrected that to say the image was of a similar submersible used in the search for the Titanic.

UPDATE August 15: Media watchdog AIM issued a press release earlier today calling for NBC News to issue an on air correction for its use of the erroneous submarine image. We're told that the Nightly News broadcast this evening did include an on air correction delivered by anchor Brian Williams. We couldn't locate the video on their site. Anyone have a link to share?

Papers bit by shark tale

The Sun, a British tabloid, and the Newquay Guardian, another UK newspaper, recently published large stories and a frightening photo announcing that a great white shark was swimming of the coast of Britain. The image was jarring: Jaws was on the prowl. Except, no. The Guardian explains:

A photograph appearing to confirm that a great white shark was lurking in waters just off Britain was today exposed as a fake.
The man who took the picture, which was featured prominently in the Sun, admitted he had snapped the creature during a fishing trip in South Africa rather than off Newquay, northern Cornwall.
"I took the picture while I was on a fishing trip in Cape Town and just sent it in as a joke," Kevin Keeble told the Newquay Voice newspaper. "I didn't expect anyone to take be daft enough to take it seriously.
"I can't believe the story went so big in the first place. I didn't even get any money out of it. If I'd have made a few quid then maybe I could have gone on another fishing trip to South Africa."
The picture was carried on the front of the Voice's rival, the Newquay Guardian, last Wednesday under the headline "Great White spotted in resort waters". On the same day, a copy of the Voice's front page appeared in the Sun newspaper.
Before then, the Sun had run a series of stories claiming that a great white - or even two, a male and female - had been seen close to St Ives...
The marine biologist David Sims, who leads the only UK scientific study of large sharks in the UK at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, said: "The Sun seems to run this story every summer. Just because parliament has gone into recess does not make this a great white shark."
Mr Keeble's picture appeared to be of a great white, but experts pointed out that there was no way of proving it had been taken in British waters.
Some aspects of the photographer's story appeared distinctly fishy. For instance, the water in his picture appears glass-like, unlike the Atlantic off north Cornwall, which tends to be choppier.
The Sun declined to comment today, but sources told the Guardian the shark editions had sold "like hot cakes".
The Newquay Guardian also enjoyed a spike in circulation, and Matt Dixon, the paper's head of content, said copies had "flown off the shelves".
He added that, as far as he was concerned, the story had not yet been proven to be a hoax, and said the paper had so far been unable to get back in touch with Mr Keeble.

Apology, with damages

In the diary in the media section of 16 July 2007 we wrongly stated that Tom   Bower's expenses while attending the Conrad Black trial were paid for by the   Evening Standard, whose editor is Mr Bower's wife, Veronica Wadley. It was   also suggested that the relationship between Mr Bower and his wife raised   similar issues to that of Conrad Black and his wife. We now accept that   these allegations were inaccurate. Mr Bower, who was covering the trial for   another newspaper and to add to the forthcoming paperback edition of his   Black biography, personally paid all his expenses and only got a reduced   rate for the incidental articles in the Evening Standard. We were also wrong   to imply that the party for the book launch of the biography was in any way   financed by Associated Newspapers as it was entirely paid for by Mr Bower   and Ms Wadley. It was never our intention to suggest that Mr Bower or Ms   Wadley had behaved corruptly in any way and we accept that such a suggestion   would be wrong. We apologise to them and have agreed to pay them damages. Link

Apology

IN last week's Sunday Mail story about the Rev John Jarvie, the man named as his lover and pictured with him on a gay website was wrongly identified as hairdresser Nigel Coombs.
We would like to set the record straight and make it clear that Mr Coombs is NOT the man having a relationship with Mr Jarvie.
Our sincere apologies to Mr Coombs for our mistake and for any distress caused. Link

Yet the original story is still online, and it makes no mention of the apology.

The Forward retracts article

In response to several complaints about our June 8 story "Suburbia Sells Settlers on the West Bank," we have checked further into the accuracy of our reporting for that article. Contrary to what we initially reported, the Kwalbrun home does not have "a Jacuzzi, a fireplace and a manicured lawn." The sale price of Marc Gottlieb's house in Cedarhurst was also incorrectly reported. Both Dr. Lara Kwalbrun and Marc Gottlieb report that they were misquoted. The Forward retracts the article and we offer our apologies to the Kwalbrun and Gottlieb families for the article's errors, and for the distress that these errors may have caused.

This was the opening line of the article:

The Kwalbrun family mansion stands four floors high and boasts five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a Jacuzzi, a fireplace and a manicured lawn. It's just like the home the Kwalbruns left behind in Teaneck, N.J., except that this residence is in a Jewish settlement surrounded by Arab villages in the West Bank.

Mirror (UK) apologizes to Brian Ferry

ON 16 April we reported on an interview given by Bryan Ferry to a German newspaper. Our article was headed "The Nazis were so amazing" and claimed that Mr Ferry had been "singing the praises of the Nazis". We now accept this was not true.
In fact, Mr Ferry had spoken only of his admiration from an artistic point of view for some aspects of German art, architecture and presentation which were associated with the Nazi regime. He made no mention of the Nazi regime nor did he use the word "Nazi". We accept that Mr Ferry abhors the Nazi regime and all it stood for.
We apologise to Mr Ferry for the offence caused by our report and are happy to set the record straight.

Fun with photos

In our article of April 30, headed "Now Muslims Get Their Own Laws in Britain", we published [the above] photograph, captioned "community leader Sheikh Yaqub Munshi".
The article described the man in question as being the head of the Sharia court in Dewsbury, about which the article together with a comment piece by Leo McKinstry contained a number of allegations, including of Islamic extremism.
We wish to make clear that the photograph in question, which was published in error, was in fact of Mr Kala Khan.
Mr Khan has no connection whatsoever with the Sharia Court or with Sheikh Yaqub Munshi. We accept that Mr Khan has no interest in supporting such courts in Britain and is not involved in any kind of extremism.
We apologise to Mr Khan for the distress and embarrassment caused by our mistake.

This paper made another bad photo error last week.

Sunday Mirror apologizes for printing hoax about David Gest

May 6 under the headline "Grease chiefs hit by pounds 8k Gest list" we said that David Gest had made a string of backstage demands before agreeing to appear on the show including a DVD of himself being played in his dressing room together with various refreshments served at specific temperatures and chauffeur-driven cars for his friends. In fact, David did not make any of these demands which, we have now discovered, were circulated as a hoax by an unknown person and we apologise to David Gest for publishing them.