behind the news

We “May” Not Be Perfect

December 3, 2004

An eagle-eyed reader writes to alert us to some choice language from the editors of the Washington Post. On Wednesday, the Post printed a supposed correction to a local story from last Saturday. Here’s a portion of the correction:

A Nov. 27 Metro headline and article may have left the impression that a Prince William County judge declined to extend a restraining order for Sarah Crawford, a Nokesville resident who was found slain last week in a Charlottesville hotel room. [Italics ours.]

And here are the first two paragraphs of the original story, which is headlined, “Va. Wife Slain After Court Denies Protection”:

This month, Sarah Crawford pleaded with a Prince William County judge to make her estranged husband stay away from her. Before and during their five-year marriage, she said in court records, he pounded on her head with his fists, forced her to have sex with him and threatened to kill her “on numerous occasions.”

Crawford, 33, was granted a temporary protective order Nov. 1, but the judge declined to extend it at a hearing Nov. 16. Six days later, she was found shot to death in a Charlottesville hotel room.

“… [M]ay have left the impression” that the judge declined to extend a restraining order? Clearly, the story explicitly states that the judge declined to extend the order. So what’s with the tentative language in the Post‘s correction?

Sign up for CJR's daily email

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the entire story rests on bad information — as it turns out, Crawford herself requested that the protection order be dismissed, as the correction later explains. The problem isn’t the “impression” that the original piece “may have left”; the problem is that the piece was fundamentally untrue.

It seems that this correction needs a correction of its own.

–Brian Montopoli

Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.