(Credit: Wikipedia)
iMediaEthics frequently rounds up interesting and amusing corrections. Below, read the latest.
1. Dallas Morning News Corrects 1977 Star Wars Review?
The Dallas Morning News apologized, forty years after the fact, for what NPR teasingly called “an error so grave, so egregious, that it long remained shrouded in silence – out of a deep sense of shame and self-recrimination that one can only imagine.”
The May 26, 2017 correction reads:
“Our review of the original Star Wars, which appeared in The Dallas Morning News on May 26, 1977, incorrectly referred to Chewbacca as a ‘Wookie.’ The correct spelling, of course, is ‘Wookiee.’ We regret the error and apologize to the seven-foot-tall hairy alien biped community.”
NPR also apologized for its own misspelling of wookiee.
2. Sean Spicer not hiding “in the bushes,” just “among bushes”
The Washington Post‘s May 10 article by Jenna Johnson reported on the White House staff’s response to Pres. Donald Trump’s firing of FBI director Jim Comey. However, one detail in the Post‘s article warranted an editor’s note. While the newspaper originally said White House press secretary Sean Spicer was standing “in the bushes” with press staff determining how to handle questions about Comey’s firing, he actually was standing “among” those bushes.
The Post‘s editor’s note:
“EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to more precisely describe White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s location late Tuesday night in the minutes before he briefed reporters. Spicer huddled with his staff among bushes near television sets on the White House grounds, not ‘in the bushes,’ as the story originally stated.”
3. The UK Express mixed up two people with the same name.
The UK Express published a story about a Pakistani couple, Syed Zaidi and Rizwana Kamal, accused of hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars so they could claim welfare benefits. With its April 27 story, however, the Express used a photo of the wrong person. Instead of showing the Pakistani woman Rizwana Kamal accused, the Express used a photo of an Indian woman named Rizwana Kamal who isn’t involved in the allegations. The Express‘s May 11 apology:
“On 27 April 2017 in an article entitled “Asylum seekers claiming benefits had £250K in hidden accounts” we reported that a Pakistani couple Syed Zaidi and Rizwana Kamal had been accused of claiming benefits in Britain despite having £250K in the bank.
“To illustrate the article we used a picture purporting to depict the accused Rizwana Kamal.“In fact the picture was of Indian citizen Rizwana Kamal who had nothing to do with the reported proceedings or claiming benefits in Britain.
“We apologise to Miss Kamal for any upset or distress this error may have caused her.”
