Craig Silverman tracks accuracy, errors & the craft of verification.
This week, a powerful, infinitely shareable blog post was picked up by many news sites and shared online an astounding number of times. The story was that Abraham Lincoln had filed a patent application for an idea that was remarkably… Read more
The Guardian had to correct a correction about actor Eugene Levy. The first, from May 8:
A profile of Eugene Levy, the American actor famed for his role in American Pie, stated: “He’s keen to be the average Joe — neither his nationality (Canadian) nor his race (Jewish) have been the least bit important, he says, in forming his comedic sensibility.” It is wrong to use the words “race” when applied to Jewish people. They are best described as a people or an ethnic group, not least because Jews include those from a wide range of racial backgrounds (Strife of Pie, 27 April, page 12, Film & music).
And from May 9:
Mea maxima culpa. A correction in this column incorrectly made the actor Eugene Levy an American. Levy is Canadian as the sentence went on to make clear (Corrections and clarifications, 9 May, page 31).
The New York Times corrected the name of Howard Stern’s bulldog:
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of Howard Stern’s bulldog. It’s Bianca, not Bernice.
The New York Times today corrected an error it first made in 1935, demonstrating that no factual error is too small to fix:
An obituary on Wednesday about the violinist Roman Totenberg repeated an error from a 1935 Times report on a concert in Washington at which Mr. Totenberg made his United States debut. He performed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major — not in D Minor. (There is no such Beethoven violin concerto.) And the obituary misstated the surname of the pianist in the Alma Trio, which also included Mr. Totenberg and the cellist Gabor Rejto. He was Adolph Baller, not Bailer.
John McIntyre, longtime copy editor and current night content production manager for the Baltimore Sun, dove into the paper’s archives for a story that shares some of the Sun’s notable mishaps and corrections.
It is, of course, delightful.
Here… Read more
The editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education says she fired contributor Naomi Schaefer Riley for her blog post about Black Studies scholarship due to the writer’s failure to back up her assertions with “even the most cursory research.”… Read more
After publishing a false report about a dentist who pulled all of her ex-boyfriend’s teeth in revenge, a reporter for the Daily Mail’s website now says he’s unable to explain exactly where the story came from.
“I’ve drawn a bit… Read more
At first I guessed it was a spell-check error that transformed fantastically-named “Sherlock” actor Benedict Cumberbatch into “Bandersnatch Cummerbund” in a Washington Post story, but I was wrong.
(Via @Alex_Ogle and @sstummeafp)
The editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education has apologized and severed the publication’s relationship with the writer of a blog post about Black Studies that “did not meet The Chronicle’s basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion… Read more
The Gazette, an English-language daily in Montreal, issued an apology online and in print after one of its reporters attracted criticism for her tweets while covering a student demonstration.
Anne Sutherland, a longtime reporter for The Gazette, was assigned to… Read more