Apr. 5, 2012 9:04 am

The Guardian runs aground while writing about the Titanic:

Writing of today’s Titanic centenary, an article said: “One hundred years ago … the largest moving man-made object on Earth eased into Belfast lough and set off for New York City”. The piece added that thousands of ticketed spectators turned out for the ship’s “launch”; 13 days later, it went on, “the Titanic lay at the bottom of the Atlantic”. To clarify, the launch of the hull watched by those crowds had been in May 1911, a year before the fully fitted ship left Belfast on 2 April 1912 for Southampton, where passengers boarded and the maiden voyage to New York began via Cherbourg and Queenstown. It was 13 days after the April 1912 departure from Belfast that the ship sank. Our piece also used the name RSS Titanic; that should have been RMS, signifying royal mail ship, not steam ship (Will the new Titanic centre do for Belfast what the Guggenheim did for Bilbao?, 24 March, page 15).

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The Guardian

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Mar. 20, 2012 3:35 pm

The Observer corrects a mishmash of nationality errors:

Identity crises: the actor Bruno Ganz is Swiss, not German (“They can be funny, sweet and flippant”, In Focus, last week, page 33); the sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) was Swiss, not Italian (“The man who stood witness for the world”, New Review, 4 March, page 12); Het Laatste Nieuws is a Belgian newspaper, not a Dutch one (“Bestseller joins the Nordic invasion of Britain”, News, 4 March, page 19) and we described RTBF as a French TV channel, when it is a French-speaking Belgian TV station (“Hazard lights up on the Spurs radar”, Sport, 19 Feb, page 1).

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The Observer

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Mar. 14, 2012 7:48 am

A lengthy correction from The Guardian addresses several errors about Iran’s nuclear program and missiles:

An article went farther than the prime minister when its opening paragraph quoted David Cameron as warning – at a parliamentary committee session – that Iran is seeking to build an “inter-continental nuclear weapon”. The prime minister was indeed talking of suspected Iranian aspirations for a “nuclear-armed future”, but his words about a missile were: “There are signs that the Iranians want to have some sort of intercontinental missile capability.” An ICBM with a nuclear warhead was not mentioned. The piece also reported that Britain’s National Security Council has been looking at possible repercussions if Israel were to launch “a pre-emptive strike against an Iranian nuclear weapons site”. We should have said nuclear site, as Iran is not known to have a site producing nuclear weapons. Finally, our piece said that Iran “is thought to be working with the Koreans to turn an existing missile into a missile that can accommodate a nuclear warhead”. There is evidence that the Iranians and North Koreans cooperated in the past on missile technology; the International Atomic Energy Agency has also asked Iran to explain evidence that it once worked on a missile payload design that could be used to deliver a nuclear warhead. But there is no proof of North Korean involvement in that design, nor is there conclusive proof that Iran has itself pursued the development of such a weapon (Iran seeking ‘intercontinental’ nuclear weapon, says PM, 7 March, page 1).

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The Guardian

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Feb. 17, 2012 11:59 am

The New York Times corrected three errors in its obituary for journalist Jeffrey Zaslow:

An obituary on Saturday about the author Jeffrey Zaslow contained several errors. The bookstore where Mr. Zaslow appeared on Thursday, the night before he was killed in an automobile accident, was in Petoskey, Mich., not in Elmira, Mich. Randy Pausch, the subject and co-author of Mr. Zaslow’s book ”The Last Lecture,” delivered the talk that gave the book its title when he learned he was dying of pancreatic cancer, not ”an ailment similar to Lou Gehrig’s disease.” And the plane that the pilot Chesley B. Sullenberger III, whose book ”Highest Duty” Mr. Zaslow co-wrote, landed in the Hudson River in 2009 was an Airbus A320 with about 150 passengers, not a commuter plane.

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The New York Times

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Jan. 20, 2012 11:08 am

An obituary on Wednesday about the harpsichordist, organist and conductor Gustav Leonhardt misspelled several names. One of the musicians who, like Mr. Leonhardt, made influential recordings on period instruments in the 1950s and 1960s was August Wenzinger, not Wenziger. The man with whom he studied organ and harpsichord at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, was Eduard Muller, not Miiller. And one of the churches in Amsterdam where Mr. Leonhardt has been organist is Waalse Kerk, not Waasle Kerk.

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A correction in The New York Times

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Dec. 22, 2011 2:53 pm

Because of an editing error, an article on Monday about Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners on Sunday, the second half of a swap in which a captive Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was returned to Israel from Gaza in October, misstated the location of Ofer Prison, the departure point of the released prisoners. It is in the West Bank, not in Israel.

The article also misstated the number of prisoners released in the first part of the swap, in October. It was 477 — not 1,027, which was the total number released over both phases of the swap.

And the article misstated Israeli charges against one of the freed prisoners, Izzedine Abu Sneineh, who had been arrested three years ago at age 15. Israel had accused him of weapons training, attempted murder and possession of explosives — not throwing stones and hanging Palestinian flags from telephone poles.

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A correction in The New York Times

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