Fox 5 San Diego mis-identified kidnapping and murder suspect James DiMaggio as Joe DiMaggio, according to Jim Romenesko.
James Lee DiMaggio is the man who was suspected of kidnapping California teen Hannah Anderson and killing her mother and brother. Over the weekend, an FBI agent shot and killed DiMaggio and rescued Anderson, the Los Angeles Times reports. Joe DiMaggio is, of course, a famous New York Yankees player who died in 1999.
At first, Fox 5 scrubbed the error with no transparent correction.
iMediaEthics reached out to the station for a correction. Shortly after sending our email, the station responded requesting a link to the story that had the error and a correction was posted. The correction, published inside the story in bolded font, reads:
“(CORRECTION: The headline of an earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the suspect as Joe DiMaggio. We regret the error.)”
Confusing high profile people with a similar name is an easy mistake. Last year, the Los Angeles Times mixed up Lance Armstrong and Neil Armstrong in headline. And NBC News confused Neil Young with Neil Armstrong.