Craig Silverman tracks accuracy, errors & the craft of verification.
Why do we need editors?
It’s a provocative question to pose publicly if you’re a journalist, and that’s exactly what GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram did today on Twitter:
This will be an unpopular question, but why do we need editors?
An Irish Daily Mail apology offers a bit of flavor from what appears to have been a spirited debate:
In our coverage yesterday of the Frontline debate on the Fiscal Treaty referendum, we stated that Norah Casey had ‘tried a cheap shot when she snidely referred to Declan Ganley’s accent, suggesting he is not as Irish as the rest of the panel’. In fact, Ms Casey had not referred to Mr Ganley’s accent. She had said: ‘I live here all year round, not just when referendums come again.’ It was Mr Ganley who claimed that Ms Casey was referring to his accent. We are happy to set the record straight and to apologise for this error.
Reuters corrects a misquote that said Facebook’s COO suffers from anxiety:
This story corrected paragraph 6 to show Sandberg said she sometimes gets anxious, not that she suffers from anxiety
Thanks to Daniel Lippman for sending the link.
Over the course of 16 years spent working in product management for Adobe, Kevin Connor often heard customers ask if there was any way to determine whether an image had been altered using Photoshop.
“We would get calls pretty frequently… Read more
Two recent New York Times articles included significant numerical errors that elicited howls of protest from readers and critics.
In each case, the wrong number was core to the story’s central thesis, leading some to suggest the entire article should… Read more
The Raleigh News & Observer offers an amusing correction after citing an incorrect band name in an editorial:
Please don’t drum us out of The Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club. Not that we don’t deserve it. Yesterday, in an editorial about the international bluegrass convention coming to Raleigh, we referenced a group that oft appeared with Andy, the Dillards. They were known on the show as the Darling family. Alas, a typo in the editorial turned Dillards into Dullards. If anything, their music was more on the level of genius. We humbly apologize.
The New York Times is in the market for a new public editor.
Erik Wemple broke the news yesterday that current public editor Arthur Brisbane will end his term this fall after two years. (Brisbane said it was… Read more
The New York Times misidentified the man Sen. John McCain called an “agent of intolerance”:
Because of an editing error, an article last Sunday about Mitt Romney’s commencement speech at Liberty University misstated, in some editions, the year of his last presidential run. It was 2008, not 2004. Also because of an editing error, the article misstated, in some editions, the surname of the evangelical leader whom Senator John McCain called an ”agent of intolerance.” It is Pat Robertson, not Pat Roberts.
Palm Beach Daily News didn’t mean bankruptcy when it said man had ‘gone bust’:
An earlier version of this story said Yellowstone Club co-founder Tim Blixseth has “gone bust.” The Daily News did not intend this to mean either that he is bankrupt or the subject of a pending bankruptcy. Rather, the reference was intended to convey that Blixseth, who was ranked among Forbes’ 400 Richest Americans as recently as 2007, has sustained financial losses and, as the story said, currently is involved in litigation arising from his financial dealings.
An Arkansas Democrat-Gazette writer offers a playful correction to a mistaken book title:
Leave it to a middle school librarian to catch us. Those people notice everything.
We recently praised The Hunger Games trilogy in this column. We liked it so much we got the name of the second book wrong. Of course it’s Catching Fire, not whatever we said last week. Imagine holding a book all those hours and then getting the title wrong. In the statewide newspaper. That takes some doing. It’s like covering a football game and screwing up the final score.
Thank you to our loyal, literate, and observant readers for keeping us straight. It can’t be easy.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (via Nexis)