Regret the Error How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech

by Silverman, Craig; Jarvis, Jeff

• ISBN13: 9781402751530
• ISBN10: 1402751532
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-11-01
• Publisher: Union Square Press

Summary

We regret the error:it's a phrase that appears in newspapers almost daily, the standard notice that something went terribly wrong in the reporting, editing, or printing of an article. From Craig Silverman, the proprietor of www.RegretTheError.com , one of the Internet's most popular media-related websites, comes a collection of funny, shocking, and sometimes disturbing journalistic slip-ups and corrections. On display are all types of media inaccuracy--from "fuzzy math" to "obiticide" (printing the obituary of a person very much alive and well) to complete and utter ethical lapses. While some of the errors can be laugh-out-loud funny, the book contains a sobering journey through the history of media mistakes (including the outrageous hoaxes that dominated newspapers during the circulation wars of the 19th-century) and a serious muckraking investigation of contemporary journalism's lack of accountability to the public. It shines a spotlight on the media's carelessness and the sometimes tragic and calamitous consequences of weak or non-existent fact checking.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Statement of Accuracy	p. 13
A Brief History of Media Accuracy and Errors	p. 15
Oral News	p. 18
Written News	p. 18
Birth of the Newspaper: The Seventeenth-Century Press	p. 21
The Eighteenth Century and the Fourth Estate	p. 25
The Nineteenth Century: From Excess and Error to Responsibility	p. 28
Mass Media: Born of a Big Lie	p. 30
Hearst, Pulitzer, and Sulzberger: A Battle for the Soul of Journalism	p. 39
The Twentieth Century: Accuracy as Code	p. 45
Regrets, More Than a Few	p. 49
"Dewey Defeats Truman"	p. 49
A Theory of Error	p. 54
The Truth About Media Errors	p. 65
Print Media Errors	p. 65
Broadcast Errors	p. 70
Uncorrected Errors	p. 76
The Necessity of Error (No, really)	p. 82
The Corrections: Multiple Offenses	p. 87
Common Errors	p. 91
Names and Titles	p. 93
The Corrections: Names and Titles	p. 98
Typos	p. 102
The Corrections: Typos	p. 107
Numbers	p. 117
The Corrections: Fuzzy Numbers	p. 128
Unreliable Sources and Malicious Reporters	p. 138
Unreliable Sources	p. 139
Malicious Reporters	p. 149
The Lesson Not Learned	p. 162
Obiticide: Death by Media	p. 166
Planned Obiticide	p. 175
Obiticide and the Average Citizen	p. 179
The Corrections	p. 181
Mistakes and the Mistaken	p. 186
The Mobster and the Clown	p. 188
The Terrorist	p. 194
Doctors, Lawyers, and the Accused	p. 197
Tainted Images	p. 200
The Corrections	p. 203
Misidentifications and Personal Errors	p. 203
Photo Misidentifications	p. 208
Errors Heard Round the World	p. 213
The Twenty-Four-Hour Broken Telephone	p. 216
Too Incredible Not to Report	p. 219
The Trouble with Corrections	p. 225
Corrections: A Brief History	p. 227
Birth of the Modern Correction	p. 229
Online Corrections	p. 233
Broadcast Corrections	p. 235
The Failure of Corrections	p. 237
The Art of Correction	p. 243
The Corrections: Strange and Sublime	p. 249
So Sorry: Remarkable Apologies	p. 258
The Disappearance of Newspaper Proofreading	p. 265
"Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu"	p. 266
The Demise of Newspaper Proofreaders	p. 268
The Birth (and Slow Death) of Magazine Fact Checking	p. 275
Anatomy of the Checker	p. 279
Everybody Has a System	p. 284
Death by a Thousand Cuts	p. 286
Watching the Detectives: The Rise of External Fact Checking	p. 292
Distributed Fact Checking: Rather Gate	p. 296
Media-Monitoring Organizations	p. 305
The Big Newspaper in the Sky	p. 310
Accuracy Training	p. 313
Ombudsmen as Error Trackers	p. 315
Instant Source Surveys	p. 316
The Corrections	p. 317
Updates and Mistakes	p. 317
Online Corrections	p. 318
Fact Checking and Plagiarism Detection	p. 321
Embracing the Lighter Side of Accuracy	p. 323
For Readers	p. 326
How to Request a Correction	p. 326
Ensuring Accuracy When Interviewed	p. 328
The Way Forward	p. 328
Afterword	p. 332
Acknowledgments	p. 336
Notes	p. 338
Index	p. 358
Error Report Form	p. 368
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