The [New York] Times published an especially embarrassing correction on July 22, fixing seven errors in a single article — an appraisal of Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchorman famed for his meticulous reporting. The newspaper had wrong dates for historic events; gave incorrect information about Cronkite’s work, his colleagues and his program’s ratings; misstated the name of a news agency, and misspelled the name of a satellite.
“Wow,” said Arthur Cooper, a reader from Manhattan. “How did this happen?”
The short answer is that a television critic with a history of errors wrote hastily and failed to double-check her work, and editors who should have been vigilant were not.
But a more nuanced answer is that even a newspaper like The Times, with layers of editing to ensure accuracy, can go off the rails when communication is poor, individuals do not bear down hard enough, and they make assumptions about what others have done. Five editors read the article at different times, but none subjected it to rigorous fact-checking, even after catching two other errors in it. And three editors combined to cause one of the errors themselves.
Good on them for writing about their mistakes so candidly – that’s a lot more than many news organisations would do. The article, written by the New York Times’ Public Editor Clark Hoyt, is worth a read.
All Evolving Newsroom
Oops. Not one, not two, but 7 errors in one obit
Ouch. It had to hurt to publish this:
Good on them for writing about their mistakes so candidly – that’s a lot more than many news organisations would do. The article, written by the New York Times’ Public Editor Clark Hoyt, is worth a read.