Regret the Error

Wait wait, we're sorry

This correction was aired at the beginning of the May12 edition of the (excellent!) public radio program, "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me":

Listen. We've got to start today's show with a correction. Last week we had some fun with President Bush saying of himself quote, "I'm the Commander Guy." Alright, let's be honest. We kind of went berserk  about it. Turned out, he didn't really say it. I know, its disappointing. The White House -- which had reported it, they said that's what he said -- they rechecked the transcript and what he said was, "I'm a commander guy," meaning he was somebody who took the side of the commanders, versus the politicians. Wait, Wait regrets the error and we wait patiently until President Bush says something else we can legitimately make fun of. Oh wait a minute ...something just came in, let's get started...

You can listen to the on air correction here by clicking on the "Who's Carl This Time?" link here. Thanks for the tip, Andrew!

A few folks on hand

In a March 5 story on ESPN Radio's Mike and Mike in the Morning, it was reported that the Detroit Lions did not have a representative at Sunday's Brady Quinn workout. According to the Lions' public relations staff, the team had four coaches, two scouts and one front office executive at the workout. Lions President Matt Millen was not there, but he could attend a later Quinn workout. Link

ESPN unveils cross-platform correction policy and procedures

One of the most enjoyable correction-related experiences comes at the end of every episode of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption, a sports talk and interview show featuring Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser.
As ESPN explains, at the end of every show, “researcher Tony Reali corrects any statistical fouls Kornheiser and Wilbon made in the heat of battle.” It’s a fun feature that’s often fodder for a little competition between Kornheiser and Wilbon, and it also serves the purpose extremely well: viewers get the right information and no errors go uncorrected. It’s arguably the best example of a regular TV correction anywhere in North America. (Do it better? Let us know.)
Now ESPN has taken its commitment to corrections further. After collaboration between John Walsh, ESPN’s executive vice president and executive editor, and senior staffers in the television, radio, print and online operations, along with consultation with experts at the Poynter Institute, ESPN now has a cross-platform corrections policy and related procedures.
From now on, corrections for any mistaken reporting by ESPN can be found here. A link to the corrections page appears prominently on the drop-down “ESPN” tab on the site, and readers can easily submit a correction using a form on the page. Once submitted, it goes to a senior editorial staffer who forwards it to the appropriate person for evaluation. ESPN is also entering every request for correction into a database, and logging every correction in another. This will enable them to evaluate progress and identify trouble spots. And to help with error prevention, its online operation recently added more copy editors. The end result appears to be a clear policy with appropriate procedures and tracking capabilities.
“It’s the right thing for our fans and users, and the right thing for our journalism,” Patrick Stiegman, the vice president and executive editor of ESPN.com, told us last week in an interview. “Given the fact that our news organization has really matured and we have so many moving parts across different platforms, the time was right to formalize the [corrections] policy and procedures with the idea that espn.com would be the hub for corrections across the company.”
Stiegman says corrections will still continue to* be issued in the originating medium, emphasizing that, “we have always corrected our errors.”
According to the new policy, ESPN will issue online corrections for errors that “involve a significant factual mistake, or materially change the implication or connotation of the reporting.” Stiegman says that, for example, an error in someone’s batting average in an online article would be corrected within the story but not noted on the corrections page. This is what’s called a “scrub” and it’s important that ESPN not get carried away with its scrubbing, lest it become a way to avoid running corrections.
As the policy states, “This policy is not intended to cover inconsequential factual errors, such as minor statistical mistakes, inadvertent and immaterial misidentifications, minor inaccuracies in a developing story or font errors that don't impair the viewers' understanding of a story.”
Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for journalism values and a senior faculty member for ethics at the Poynter Institute, reviewed the policy with three Poynter staff members. “All of us felt the new policy was substantial and meaningful,” he said. “We described it as: ‘well-thought out, thorough, professional, responsible, comprehensive...’ We suggested the ESPN guidelines on corrections ‘will set a new standard for broadcast and online transparency’ and the guidelines could be a ‘model’ for other news organizations.”
As for the increased copy editing resources in the online operation, Stiegman says, “the amount of content being produced was out pacing the copy editing resources behind it.”  ESPN also hired an ombudsman 20 months ago.
Overall, it looks like ESPN has taken the issue of corrections seriously and applied the necessary effort and resources to come up with its cross-platform policy and procedures. While the issue of scrubbing is not ideal, it could be acceptable if only applied to the smallest of typos.
ESPN’s work should also serve as notice to all the “hard news” organizations out there who haven’t deemed it necessary to create an online corrections page. That means broadcasters like CNN, CBS, ABC, Fox etc., as well as newspapers like USA Today, which recently totally redesigned its website and neglected to add a corrections page. Perhaps this will spur them into action.
Good night, Canada!

*Correction March 5: The word "to" was originally missing from this sentence. The word "procedure" in the headline also contained an extra "e" in the middle.

Aussie radio station apologizes for broadcasting false rumor

From a story in the Sunday Mail of South Australia:

RADIO station Triple M has apologised for running a false rumour in its New Zoo breakfast show...
On August 17, the program aired a rumour from ''Barb of Unley'' that ''a high-profile politician was seen doing a little bit of shopping at Coles on Glynburn Rd . . . (and) his driver was parked in a disabled car space with the engine running''.
When Blackman asked what letter his name started with, ''Barb'' said: ''He's known for his stunts outside Parliament House such as his cash cow and gravy train.''
The victim of the false rumour, Mr Xenophon, engaged lawyers to seek a retraction.
''The thing that gives me credibility as a politician is that I have actively opposed and resisted perks such as cars, drivers and super,'' Mr Xenophon said at the time.
''I don't have a government car and I'm not entitled to a driver - it didn't happen.''
The station's apology says, in part: ''We accept completely that the rumour was false and that Nick Xenophon was not involved in any way with such a parking incident.
''Triple M apologises unreservedly for any concern or embarrassment caused to him by the broadcast.''
In an earlier statement, station manager Sam Ciccarello said staff had been counselled...

Quiet -- or else!

In a newscast aired earlier this week, solicitor general Keith Friday said that the penalty for violating the noise control act was 12 years imprisonment.
Well, citizens against noise, the group lobbying for the enforcement of the act, contacted our news desk to clarify that the penalty is in fact 12 months incarceration and not 12 years.
This was much needed clarification since the earlier statement of 12 year had provoked quite a response from the public with some websites expressing outrage over the length of the sentence.
Some of the questions being asked by john public is how will the level of noise be measured and who determine if it actually noise and who will be the judge of that. Link

       

Those elusive broadcast corrections

We tend to focus our accuracy/corrections reporting on the print media, and this is because newspapers and magazines (and online publications) tend to give us the most fodder. Newspapers in particular run a lot of corrections. You see corrrections pretty much every day in major publications.
As a result, we're often asked why we don't spend more time scrutinizing broadcast media. The answer is simple: With the exception of a few places like NPR and the online operation of MSNBC, the vast majority of broadcast media don't have an online corrections section. Nor do they reserve a portion of their programs to offer corrections to previous stories. In extreme circumstances they will put one online or in a broadcast, but most of the time there's nothing to be found unless someone happens to be watching at the right time. (Or one of the media watchdogs finds some fresh meat.)
The online operation of broadcast outlets seem to prefer to scrub the error out of the story and forgo any correction. CNN, Fox News, NBC, CBS, ABC and (we bet) your local TV and radio news programs don't have static, easily found corrections pages online, and they don't reserve airtime to correct mistakes. If an anchor or reporter realizes their mistake right away, they will make an instant correction on the air, which is ideal. But what happens when an error only becomes known after the fact? There's no universal standard. (Is your station/network the exception to the rule? Email us.)
This dearth of broadcast corrections makes it tough for us to track errors. The result is that the medium with the higher corrections standard -- print -- gets more scrutiny. It's an unfortunate side effect.
But do broadcast media make fewer errors than print? As far as we know, no one has made a comparative study. As an anecdotal judgment, we doubt it. This is partly assured by the fact that broadcast reporters will regularly look to print media to conduct research. An error that occurs in a daily newspaper will often be passed on by an evening newscast. Also, TV and radio reporters operate in much the same way as newspaper reporters when it comes to news gathering. They research, they interview sources. Regular newscasts aren't subject to the kind of fact checking process used by many large magazines. Major news magazines like, say, 60 Minutes have more lead time to fact check stories. But that doesn't result in total accuracy. (Hello Bush National Guard story.)
So while both print and broadcast make errors, news networks will usually just fix their reports for the next time around (or for the affiliates) when an error is pointed out. It will be correct the next time, but rarely is the previous gaffe ever noted. Ditto for radio news.
The editor of this site had a personal experience with this about a decade ago A morning newscaster on the radio reported that 6 million people died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The editor called in to say that number referred only to Jews, and that another 5 million Gypsies, homosexuals and other targeted people were also killed in the camps. The reporter simply removed the numerical mention for the next time around. No correction.

We chose today to address this issue and call upon broadcast outlets to (at least) add an online corrections page because yesterday ABCNews.com ran a serious correction on the front page of its politics section. We were struck by the rarity of this correction. (ABC does place corrections to wire stories in the online version, but it has no corrections page.) The ABC correction was given unusually prominent placement because it dealt with a very serious error: Plagiarism. Someone at ABCNews.com lifted material from a Boston Globe article. ABC responded by removing the article and running a correction that states:

Over the weekend, ABC News was alerted to the fact that a story on its Web site regarding the Patriot Act and the presidential use of signing statements bore numerous similarities to an exclusive story that appeared in Friday's Boston Globe, as well as on its Web site. Upon further investigation, it is clear that the story posted by ABCNEWS.com was substantially similar to the Boston Globe's enterprise reporting on the subject. As soon as ABC News became aware of this situation, it immediately took down the offending post. ABC News has taken appropriate disciplinary action and apologizes to the Boston Globe and to our readers for this unacceptable breach of our standards.

UPDATE: The correction is no longer on the ABC News site. We sent an email to inquire if this is a production error, or if the network consciously removed it...
While it's nice to see ABC News running a correction in a fairly prominent place, readers deserve more information. (A screen shot of the correction's placement is at the end of this post.) This is a criticism we level against many news outlets, both print and otherwise. (For an example, go here.) Corrections are frequently too vague. For instance, we think this is the Boston Globe story in question, but who knows?
In this situation it's essential for ABC to inform readers as to the disciplinary action taken. Was the offending reporter fired? Suspended? Given a stern talking to? Was a note put in their file? Maybe. ABC could also take the opportunity to inform readers about its "standards." We looked but couldn't find them anywhere on the site. The end result is some sort of unknown disciplinary action based on uncommunicated standards. Open the kimono a bit, please.
After the National Guard debacle, CBS News took the rare step of launching PublicEye, a blog with the goal of bringing "transparency to the editorial operations of CBS News — transparency that is unprecedented for broadcast and online journalism." Yes, it was a unique step and CBS News deserves credit for investing in this kind of operation. But where is its online corrections page? What is CBS' policy for handling errors in the evening newscast? On its website?
With a few exceptions, broadcast outlets are unwilling to offer the kind of bare minimum corrections found in print. If they'd like to argue that they don't need corrections pages or a corrections space in their broadcasts because they're so darn accurate, we'd be eager to listen. Honestly.
We constantly agitate for a higher standard of accuracy and corrections in the media, but it seems the first step for broadcast journalism is to first raise itself to the standard met by its inky brothers in the print world. That means noting errors in a standardized way, and not just scrubbing scripts and web pages.
To help call attention to this issue, Regret today unveils a new sidebar on the left-hand side of the site. Entitled "Where Is Your Online Corrections Page?," it lists the major English North American broadcast -- and print! -- outlets that lack an online corrections page. This is a necessary first step for the broadcast world. We've included major NA newspapers on the list because they lag far behind the standard met by the vast majority of their brethren in the top 20 US papers (by weekday circ, according to FAS-FAX).
If you have a moment, email your preferred broadcast (and/or print outlet) and ask them why they don't have a corrections page on their site, and how they handle errors on the air. Let us know what happens.
If we've wrongly put your outlet on our list, please let us know. We'll remove you, correct the record, and give you a place of honor on the right hand side of the site. We'll make a note whenever a left column outlet makes passage to the right.

ABC screenshot (click for larger view):

Station fires host after he, um, praises Condoleezza Rice

Excerpt from an AP story:

A St. Louis radio station quickly fired a talk show host for uttering a racial epithet as he talked about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on his morning show Wednesday.
Dave Lenihan apologized on the air immediately after making what he said was a slip of the tongue. KTRS president and general manager Tim Dorsey agreed the remark was accidental but said it was nonetheless "unacceptable, reprehensible and unforgivable."Lenihan had been heaping praise on Rice, who has frequently said she aspires to run the NFL one day but has more recently ruled out seeking to replace retiring Commissioner Paul Tagliabue."She's been chancellor of Stanford," Lenihan said on the air. "She's got the patent resume of somebody that has serious skill. She loves football. She's African-American, which would kind of be a big coon. A big coon. Oh my God. I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that."
He said he had meant to say "coup" instead of the racial slur...

Full story here.

False tsunami warning sent to Alaskan media

From Associated Press (link):

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A National Weather Service worker inadvertently sent a tsunami warning to Alaska radio and television stations Monday as employees were reviewing procedures to issue such alerts.
Officials suspect the warning was transmitted when someone accidentally double-clicked the cancel button with their computer's mouse, said Sam Albanese, warning co-ordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service's Anchorage office.
After the cancel button is clicked once, the screen disappears. But once it goes away, the screen behind it has the transmit button in the same location as the cancel button.
Rapidly clicking the mouse twice may have unintentionally sent the tsunami warning since the computer program did not have a confirmation screen to send it, Albanese said.
"There is no confirmation when that transmit is hit, it just starts to transmit," Albanese said.
Officials have initiated procedures to make sure the error is not repeated.
"We're working with programmers to make sure there is a fail-safe put into the program so we don't transmit something inadvertently," he said.
The message, which went directly from the weather service to Alaska broadcasters, only contained a tsunami warning header. If it were a real emergency, meteorologists would have added actual text into the body of the message, outlining which areas of the state would have been covered by the warning.
The Weather Service later sent a correction.
Media outlets across the state were taken by surprise with the 8:53 a.m. warning. The weather service received phone calls from stations from Fairbanks to Juneau when the tsunami warning was not followed by any further information.
Television stations also received calls after the tsunami warning crawled across their screens.
"Every phone in the place started ringing," said Ed Bennett, assignment editor for KTUU television in Anchorage. "We had between 30 to 50 phones calls in the newsroom and an equal number at the front office in a 15 minute period."

Media hoaxed by fake Ryan Seacrest interview

On Thursday the Trentonian newspaper reported about a New Jersey radio DJ who had a heated exchange with Ryan Seacrest about whether or not he was gay. From the story:

"Ryan," Carton said, "Are you gay?"
Silence.
"Ryan, are you a homosexual?"
With that, Seacrest was headed for the door.
"I can’t stay here, man," Seacrest said. "I gotta jet."
The "American Idol" star stormed out of the studio and into the NJ-101.5 offices, but he was coaxed back into the studio with the understanding that the rest of the interview would center on the television show and not on his personal life.
"This was supposed to be about the show, about ‘American Idol,’" Seacrest said when he returned to the air.
Co-host Ray Rossi, an admitted "Idol" fan, was ready to move on, but Carton wouldn’t let up.
"Are you gonna walk out again if I ask you about it?" Carton asked Seacrest.
"Absolutely. I’m outta here," said Seacrest.
Immediately, Carton asked "Are you gay?" "You know," Seacrest said, "I don’t know why I trusted you."
And, again, Seacrest was out the door, this time for good.

Pretty shocking, huh? Well, it was a prank. That wasn't Seacrest on the air; it was an impersonator. As a story in Newsday noted, this isn't the first time this radio show has pulled a prank. "During yesterday's show, Carton recalled the duo's interview three years ago with singer Bobby Darin, who had died 30 years earlier," it noted. "Carton also promised that listeners can expect another scam three years from now."
As is frequently the case, the story spread from the Trentonian to other papers such as the Philly Daily News and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Gawker also noted the item. The DJ later revealed the interview was a fake, causing several outlets to run corrections. We've noted some below. One problem, however, is that the Trentonian's original, incorrect story is still on their site without any correction appended. (The paper did run a corrective article, which is excerpted below.)

Dan Gross would like to apologize to Ryan Seacrest and to Daily News readers for an incorrect report in his Thursday column. It was not Seacrest, the host of Fox’s “American Idol,” who stormed out of an interview with New Jersey 101.5 Wednesday afternoon. It was an imposter. “Jersey Guys” hosts Craig Carton and Ray Rossi were interviewing a Seacrest impersonator when they repeatedly asked whether the TV star were gay.

The radio hosts yesterday acknowledged the prank, which was covered on the front page of the Trentonian, and also led to a flood of media calls to New Jersey 101.5 yesterday.

“It’s nice to know a radio station can still pull off a stunt like this…We can take anyone down…it’s within our power. The Washington Post wanted to do a front-page story for tomorrow. That’s the power the Jersey Guys have,” the megalomaniacal Carton said.

Carton also poked fun at Gross for the erroneous report and said “I wouldn’t want to be that guy today.” Neither would we.

Seacrest’s publicist Meredith O’Sullivan told Gross yesterday her client has never done an interview with New Jersey 101.5, but had nothing else to say about the radio prank. Link

An item in Friday's Peach Buzz about American Idol host Ryan Seacrest storming out of a radio interview was incorrect. New Jersey 101.5 did an interview with a man pretending to be Seacrest as a hoax, according to the Philadelphia Daily News, the original source of the information. Link

You know how it didn’t really make sense that Ryan Seacrest would be doing a live, in-studio radio interview in New Jersey? And how it didn’t really make sense why, after the first time he walked out of the studio because the DJ asked about his sexuality, he would have agreed to continue the interview? Yeah, well, it now makes sense that it didn’t make sense. Because it turns out it didn’t actually happen... Link

We were scammed.
Local radio station New Jersey-101.5 pulled an on-air prank Wednesday afternoon and we fell for it.
So did other media outlets from New York to Philadelphia and beyond -- including The Trentonian.
During Wednesday’s "Jersey Guys" broadcast, host Craig Carton told listeners that television’s "American Idol" host, Ryan Seacrest, was there inside the Ewing studio as part of a publicity tour for the show.
Yesterday, however, Carton revealed that the whole thing had been a hoax and that he’d enlisted someone with a similar-sounding voice to act the part of Seacrest.
Listeners - and media outlets - were fooled by Wednesday’s fake interview... Link

Former NPR reporter sues NPR and MoMA over "false correction"

David D'Arcy, a contributor to NPR for over 20 years prior to his recent "termination," has filed a $5 million lawsuit against NPR and the Museum of Modern Art. D'Arcy alleges the museum pressured NPR into running a "false correction" that suggested he got his facts wrong and didn't give MoMA a chance to comment in a piece. The New York Post ran an article about the suit in Sunday's paper (it's not available online). Here's the beginning:

An axed National Public Radio reporter has filed a $5 million suit against the news organization and the Museum of Modern Art, claiming that he was slandered for his report on a Nazi-looted painting once displayed at the museum.
David D'Arcy says MoMA retaliated against him for the piece - which questioned the museum's role in a Jewish family's fight to reclaim Egon Schiele's "Portrait of Wally" - by allegedly lying to NPR and saying he got his facts wrong.
D'Arcy, who had freelanced for NPR for 21 years, was "terminated" after an inquiry into the report, which aired in December 2004 on "All Things Considered."
The Manhattan journalist, who still reports for the BBC and other outlets, claims the museum pressured NPR to issue a "false correction" and threatened to cut off the news organization from stories and museum events.

D'Arcy had filed two reports on the painting prior to the December 2004 broadcast. He reported on the painting in September 1999, and again in August 2000. But the one that set off the chain of events was from December 27, 2004. You can listen to it here, and this is the story description on the NPR site:

The Museum of Modern Art is opposing a Jewish family and the U.S. government over a painting seized by the Nazis in 1939. MOMA wants the work by Austrian painter Egon Schiele sent back to the Austrian foundation that lent it for a show. But under U.S. law, "Portrait of Wally" could be stolen property that should be returned to the family. David D'Arcy reports.

Above that description is this correction:

Correction: The government, not the museum, has custody of the artwork. The museum says it took no position on the question of the painting's ownership. NPR failed to give the museum a chance to answer allegations about its motivations and actions.

According to a March 15, 2005 column by NPR ombudsman Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, NPR also aired a "clarification" to the piece in January 2005. Dvorkin's column gives some background on the correction. He also refers to an Artnet.com story that was critical of D'Arcy's dismissal:

After being contacted by MoMA, NPR aired a clarification of the story. The artnet.com story suggests that NPR caved into pressure from a powerful cultural institution. Sounds like a classic story of big cultural institution running over the rights of dispossessed owners of great art, right?
But the story is more complicated: the original report did not, in my opinion, fully and accurately present all of the facts. Nor did it present MoMA's position on the ownership question. The painting has been in federal custody for years, and MoMA's position is that the Austrian courts must decide the painting's legal owners, since the painting was in the United States only as part of a loan arrangement.
Most important, in an issue of journalistic fairness, the report did not give MoMA a chance to respond to specific and direct charges leveled against it by numerous critics. The original report was wrongly framed, and NPR was right to air a clarification in early January.

The Post reported, "D'Arcy claims that MoMA deliberately 'mischaracterized' the Schiele case to NPR 'in order to make me appear to be a reckless, dishonest, unethical and irresponsible journalist'."
D'Arcy contents that, unlike the correction states, the museum was given a chance to comment and it has taken a position on the ownership of the painting.
"MoMA declined comment, saying it had not received a copy of the lawsuit," reported the Post. "An NPR spokeswoman said that MoMA never pressured the organization to fire D'Arcy and that an inquiry by a co-managing editor found that 'the piece did not meet NPR News standards in its reporting'."
We'll keep you posted.