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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Regret the Error

1. May 6, 2011 12:18 PM

   “Obama Osama bin Laden Is Dead”

   The Osama/Obama error is an international phenomenon

   By Craig Silverman

   Of all the mistaken headlines, verbal gaffes, and erroneous tweets that resulted from the Sunday announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, this tour de force of Obama/Osama confusion defeats all comers: I take special pride in the fact that the offending anchor is a fellow Canadian. (She works for Global TV.) It also goes to show that the...

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2. May 27, 2011 11:43 AM

   “Death Panels” Report Reaches Depressing Conclusions

   The media is ineffective at dispelling false rumors

   By Craig Silverman

   Harold Camping was wrong about the rapture happening this past weekend, but it’s unlikely he’ll ever admit to being wrong in the way most of us know he is. The same goes for hardcore birthers, the people who believed “death panels” were part of healthcare legislation, and those convinced that vaccines cause autism. All are wrong, and demonstrably so. But...

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3. November 5, 2010 11:23 AM

   Star Trek Insurrection

   Commenters force news site to admit “Patrick Stewart is a handsome man”

   By Craig Silverman

   “We're sorry for claiming Captain Kirk was in command of Captain Picard's starship,” reads the headline on a rather remarkable apology issued this week by News.com.au, the Australian news portal owned by Rupert Murdoch. Look just below the headline and you’re treated to a grainy image of the venerable Captain Jean Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise flipping the bird....

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4. January 27, 2011 02:34 PM

   A New Commitment to Transparency at ESPN

   Network to codify its standards and practices

   By Craig Silverman

   In October the National Republican Congressional Committee sent an e-mail to supporters that was signed by former Notre Dame football coach and current ESPN contributor Lou Holtz. “My friend, YOU, are the NRCC’s 12th man and they urgently need your help to win every U.S. House seat possible, fire Nancy Pelosi, and elect a Republican to the Speaker’s chair this...

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5. August 19, 2011 12:00 PM

   A Victim’s Tale

   What it's like to be on the receiving end of a press error

   By Craig Silverman

   Last week was a terrible one for Jon Harris, a librarian at the North Canton Public Library in Ohio. On Thursday he was smoking a cigarette on his front porch when a man walked up, pulled a gun, and demanded Harris hand over his money and laptop. On Saturday he and his girlfriend arrived home to find all of the...

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6. July 1, 2011 01:19 PM

   And on the Fender Bass, President Abraham Lincoln!

   A humorous correction earns AAA World some praise

   By Craig Silverman

   It wasn’t too long after the July/August issue of the mid-Atlantic edition of AAA World magazine reached subscribers that Mike Caddell and his colleagues began receiving the emails. When I spoke with him this week, he said they were still coming in. This edition of AAA World is sent to over two million households in the mid-Atlantic region of the...

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7. June 3, 2011 11:52 AM

   Best Practices for Social Media Verification

   Some tips and thoughts from the experts

   By Craig Silverman

   Whether you view it as long overdue or just in time, I believe we are starting to see the emergence of best practices for verifying social media content and citizen reports. Recent weeks and months have seen leading practitioners of social media verification and crowdsourced verification share tips and thoughts to help move the discipline forward. Below is a summary...

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8. January 7, 2011 11:51 AM

   Cable Access

   Once again: WikiLeaks did not publicly release 250,000 diplomatic cables

   By Craig Silverman

   [Update: Craig Silverman elaborates on this column in a new CJR podcast, which you can listen to elsewhere on CJR.org here, or via iTunes here.] Time for a pop quiz: How many of the leaked diplomatic cables in WikiLeaks’s possession has the organization released publicly? A) Roughly 2,000 B) Roughly 250,000 C) None. They’ve all been released by media outlets....

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9. September 9, 2011 01:19 PM

   Calling Out a Source that Lied

   The Memphis Commercial Appeal holds Schnucks accountable

   By Craig Silverman

   As far as official denials go, it was clear and emphatic. Lori Willis, communications director of the Schnucks grocery chain, issued this response after a reporter with the Memphis Commercial Appeal recently asked if the rumors were true that her company was selling its local stores to Kroger. Typically, we would not comment on rumor and speculation, but I will...

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10. April 29, 2011 12:18 PM

    Controversy at “Fox News North”

    An “unfortunate episode” at Canada’s Sun News Network

    By Craig Silverman

    Imagine for a moment that we’re in the middle of a presidential election. Now imagine that late in the campaign Rupert Murdoch publishes an editorial in the New York Post condemning a high level Republican campaign strategist for passing along incorrect information about the Democratic nominee to Fox News. Kind of hard to picture, I know. But what if it...

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11. September 16, 2011 12:23 PM

    Eight Simple Rules for Doing Accurate Journalism

    Some new, some old, some wonderfully clichéd

    By Craig Silverman

    It’s a cliché to say clichés exist for a reason. As journalists, we’re supposed to avoid them like the, um, plague. But it’s useful to have a catchy phrase that can stick in someone’s mind, particularly if you’re trying to spread knowledge or change behaviour. This week I began cataloguing some of my own sayings about accuracy — you can...

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12. July 29, 2011 11:35 AM

    From Breaking News to Baseless Speculation

    Why journalists jumped to conclusions about the Norway attacks

    By Craig Silverman

    Why do journalists and news organizations exhibit such a lack of restraint when it comes to breaking news like last week’s events in Norway? This is the question I’ve most frequently been asked in the week since the bloody attacks. Many news organizations leapt to the conclusion that the bombing and shootings were the work of a jihadist terrorist group....

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13. May 20, 2011 12:24 PM

    How News Ombudsmen Can Make Themselves Essential

    Five easy tips for the modern ombud

    By Craig Silverman

    What do you tell a room filled with doomed journalists? When invited to deliver a keynote address at this year’s Organization of News Ombudsmen conference in Montreal, I found myself thinking about whether I should focus my remarks on helping them secure their survival in the new world of news. After all, the 2009 gathering in Washington included sessions such...

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14. July 8, 2011 12:45 PM

    Introducing the Grantland Corrections Desk

    Deadspin picks up Bill Simmons’s slack

    By Craig Silverman

    “Without looking it up, I can tell you the night the Toronto Blue Jays won their first World Series — October 24, 1992 — because that was also the night I lost my virginity.” That’s how Esquire writer at large Chris Jones began his first column about the American League East for Grantland, the new sports website headed by Bill...

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15. April 8, 2011 12:20 PM

    Is This the World’s Best Twitter Account?

    Meet Andy Carvin, verification machine

    By Craig Silverman

    Yesterday morning NPR’s Andy Carvin took a break from running one of the world’s best Twitter accounts to explain what it’s like to be a living, breathing real-time verification system. “All of this is more art than science,” he said. In truth, it sounds equal parts exhilarating and exhausting. As has been repeatedly detailed in other places, Carvin is the...

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16. March 25, 2011 11:59 AM

    Misinformation Clouds Much Japan Coverage

    International media’s output enters the “Journalistic Hall of Shame”

    By Craig Silverman

    Andrew Woolner’s Yokohama residence was left without power shortly after the recent major earthquake struck Japan. But his laptop and cell phone still had juice, and he managed to get online and read about what had happened. “We’re used to getting earthquakes—we live in Japan,” he said when we spoke earlier this week. He knew something was different this time,...

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17. November 4, 2011 12:18 PM

    Misinformation Propagation

    Scientists work to combat false memes

    By Craig Silverman

    Growing up in Rome, Filippo Menczer used to watch the local con artists offer gullible tourists a chance to buy the Coliseum. The scam worked often enough that it spread and other people began doing it, until a combination of police action and human intelligence defeated it. (Well, at least no one tried to sell me the Coliseum when I...

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18. June 24, 2011 11:47 AM

    Misquotes That Refuse to Die

    Things that David Plouffe, Captain Kirk, and others didn’t say

    By Craig Silverman

    Back in 2009, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign manager, David Plouffe, said some rather kind words about Utah governor Jon Huntsman, and he has probably been regretting them ever since. As detailed this week by The New York Times Magazine’s Matt Bai, Plouffe’s comments were mangled into an erroneous quote that has been republished in outlets including The Economist, Newsweek, UPI,...

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19. January 21, 2011 12:39 PM

    Q & A: Stephen Abell

    Talking with the director of the U.K.’s Press Complaints Commission

    By Craig Silverman

    In late December, British tabloid The Sun published a correction to a sensational story it had writ large on the front page: Further to our article about increased security at Coronation Street's studios for their live 50th anniversary episode ... we would like to make clear that while cast and crew were subject to full body searches, there was no...

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20. December 3, 2010 09:59 AM

    Q&A: Blur Author Tom Rosenstiel

    On verification and critical thinking in the new, open journalistic era

    By Craig Silverman

    In their 2001 book, The Elements of Journalism Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach list ten fundamental principles (“elements”) that make up journalism, and number four was, “Its essence is a discipline of verification.” Their latest offering, Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload goes beyond what journalists need to know and practice by outlining the...

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