Reporting, like 911, is a joke.
This awesome blog called Regret the Error collects factual error corrections from newspapers around the world and puts them in one spot, which is brilliant, so of course the guy who runs it, Craig Silverman, put out a book of the best ones.
In the “Best of 2009″ post, he awards this year’s best correction to the Washington Post. Read Silverman’s set up and then the correction itself:
This year’s winner is without question amusing — not to mention embarrassing for the news organization that published it — in that it demonstrates a certain amount of cultural/musical ignorance. But it earns Correction of the Year honors because of what happened after it was published. This Washington Post correction inspired an amusing Twitter hashtag, which saw people come together to come up with imagined corrections. It’s Correction of the Year because it communicates that people notice and care about corrections, and because it demonstrates the participatory potential being unleashed by the Internet. The correction:
“A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.”
Somewhere, Chuck D is shaking his head in bemused shame.
Click to read some other fun ones!
From the News Tribune (Washington State):
A photo caption on Tuesday’s Page A8 said a student was performing the Heimlich maneuver on a dummy. The student was actually playing around and pretending to choke the dummy.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Bear sighting: An item in the National Briefing in Sunday’s Section A said a bear wandered into a grocery story in Hayward, Wis., on Friday and headed for the beer cooler. It was Thursday.
From The Sun (UK):
In a report on May 5, 2009, headlined “Riddle of Boruc, the brunette and his hair straighteners”, we claimed that Artur Boruc had brought two girls to the house he shares with partner Sara Mannei and had sex with one of them. We published a picture which we said showed him straightening one of the girls’ hair. We now accept the picture was in fact of Mr Boruc and his younger sister Paulina in Poland some years earlier, and that neither did Mr Boruc invite back nor have sex with either of the girls in our story. We apologise to Mr Boruc and Ms Mannei for any embarrassment caused.
From The Justice (Brandeis University):
The original article provided the incorrect location of New York University’s new institution. It is in Abu Dhabi, not Abu Ghraib.
From YES! Weekly (North Carolina):
After careful review of Keith T. Barber’s interview with Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith, we have determined that Mr. Keith was misquoted in a single instance.
The quote we reported: “If you’re African American, you’re six, seven or eight times more likely to have a violent history. I didn’t go out there and put a gun in your hand and say, ‘You commit eight crimes and I’m a white man and I’ll commit one.’ That’s just instincts, that’s how it is.”
The actual quote: “If you’re African American, you’re six, seven or eight times or some figure more likely to have a violent history. I didn’t go out there and put a gun in your hand and say, ‘You commit eight crimes and I’m a white man and I’ll commit one.’ That’s just statistics. That’s how it is.”
The differences between the two quotes have been noted with italics …
Some are funny, some are sad, some are just ridiculous, but you should read them all here.
