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2007’s top media errors and corrections

Posted by Richard on December 13, 2007

As the year-end approaches, people are putting together lots of best and worst lists. Craig Silverman's Regret the Error has a wonderful collection of choice errors, typos, corrections, and apologies from the news media. The error of the year was the supposed photo of a Russian sub on a voyage to the Arctic. It was distributed around the world by Reuters and broadcast by NBC Nightly News. A 13-year-old Icelandic boy correctly identified the picture as being from the film Titanic.

One of my favorites was this correction from The Sentinel-Review in Woodstock, Ontario:

In an article in Monday's newspaper, there may have been a misperception about why a Woodstock man is going to Afghanistan on a voluntary mission. Kevin DeClark is going to Afghanistan to gain life experience to become a police officer when he returns, not to shoot guns and blow things up.

The Sentinel-Review apologizes for any embarrassment this may have caused

The Guardian had this correction, which really makes me want to read the whole bizarre story:

In They live by night, page 4, G2 August 27, we wrote about a man who beat bats to death with a dingy paddle; we meant dinghy paddle.

I love this typo:

The Houston Chronicle, like just about every other North American media outlet, spent a lot of time reporting on Anna Nicole Smith this past year. In attempting to explain her, um, humble origins, the paper gave itself a measure of comeuppance. And that’s what makes it the typo of the year.

A photo caption in the paper read:

“When Redding, a longtime scout for Playboy, discovered Smith, the model could barely right a sentence…”

Who’s illiterate now?

And  then there's this correction by The Observer (UK) of an unfortunate oversight in a recipe: 

We should clarify that the stir-fried morning glory recipe featured in Observer Food Monthly last week uses an edible morning glory Ipomoea aquatica, found in south east Asia and also known as water spinach. This should not to be confused with the UK Ipomoea, also known as morning glory, which is poisonous.

Oops. Hope all the readers survived. 

There are scores more, ranging from odd to hilarious. Check it out

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