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

by Silverman, Craig; Jarvis, Jeff

• ISBN13: 9781402765643
• ISBN10: 1402765649
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-02-03
• Publisher: Union Square Press

Summary

Winner of the National Press Club's Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism! From Craig Silverman, proprietor of www.RegretTheError.com, comes a lively journey through the history of media mistakes via a chronicle of funny, shocking, and often disturbing journalistic slip-ups. The errorsrunning the gamut from hilarious to tragicinclude "Fuzzy Numbers" (when numbers and math undermine reporting) "Obiticide" (printing the obituary of a living person), and "Unintended Consequences" (typos and misidentifications that create a new, incorrect reality). While some of the errors are laugh-out-loud funny, the book also offers a serious investigation of contemporary journalism's lack of accountability to the public, and a rousing call to arms for all news organizations to mend their ways and reclaim the role of the press as honest voice of the people. - With a new introduction from the author and up-to-date new errors - Received extensive reviews, and appeared in many columns by newspaper editors

Author Biography

Craig Silverman is a journalist and the founder of RegretTheError.com, an authoritative Web site compiling humorous (and calamitous) media errors that receives tens of thousands of visitors every month

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Paperback Edition	p. xi
Foreword	p. xxv
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. 293
Distributed Fact Checking: RatherGate	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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