‘We (Really) Regret The Error’

Journalists laughed nervously — but laughed nonetheless — at the news that billionaire investor Warren Buffett had been misquoted recently.

Buffett told reporters in Toronto that if the United States continues to run a deficit, the U.S. dollar would be “worth less.” A Dow Jones wire story, however, reported him saying it would be “worthless” and the story was widely picked up by other media.

That kind of an explosive statement by such an influential figure as Buffett should have been questioned and double-checked by editors, but all journalists live in fear of doing something similar themselves.

That’s what happened a few years ago in Winnipeg. A correction in the Winnipeg Free Press apologized for incorrectly quoting Lloyd Axworthy, a former Liberal foreign affairs minister, regarding the war in Lebanon.

The paper implied Axworthy was critical of Winnipeg’s Asper family for using its media empire to defend Israel and shape Canadian foreign policy.

Said the correction: “Where we quoted Axworthy as saying ‘the Aspers,’ he in fact had said ‘diasporas.’ We sincerely apologize to both Axworthy and the Asper family.”

Not so long ago at this newspaper, a novice reporter quoted a man we thought was London West MPP Chris Bentley. Problem was, we phoned the wrong Chris Bentley, who despite not being a politician, didn’t question why we were calling him for a quote and happily provided one for us, which we printed. (Fortunately, it was a pretty tame quote.)

When Bentley the politician informed us he didn’t speak to anyone from The Free Press, it took some figuring out, believe me.

Things like this happen when journalists are working to increasingly tight deadlines and multi-tasking editors are overworked.

However funny they might seem, we don’t laugh so much as cry inside about the mistakes of others — we know how close we are to them ourselves — and believe me, we’re all devastated when we make an error.

And we know even the smallest errors — typographical, grammatical, factual — cause not only immediate damage to those involved but erode the credibility of the news organization over the long term.

That’s why we try so hard to minimize them, despite what it might look like to some of you. (Let’s face it: there have been many errors in The Free Press over the years.)

But if you think we’re worse than any other media outlet, you might be interested in a book called Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech, by Craig Silverman.

Silverman edits a website called Regrettheerror.com, which inspired the book. He has a daily listing of screw-ups by people like me: some are hilarious; others simply alarming.

Recently, he’s been tallying the number of times Barack Obama has been misidentified or had his name misspelled. And needless to say, it doesn’t cover all the mistakes, because news organizations don’t admit to all of them, simply neglect to correct some, and agree to disagree with readers, viewers and listeners on others.

In an interview with Chip Scanlon of the Poynter Institute, Silverman said: “I came up with the idea of tracking errors and corrections early in 2004 and was inspired to move ahead after I saw this July correction from the Lexington Herald-Leader: ‘It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission.’ That told me there would be a lot to say about corrections and errors. So I launched in October 2004.”

Since then, unfortunately for journalism, he’s had no trouble keeping the list alive.

– By Paul Berton

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