Mistakes in newspapers are like warts. They mar the beauty of the product, which for a newspaper includes its credibility. The paper may look handsome with large color photographs on the front page, eye-catching graphics, snazzy headlines and investigative stories. But errors can spoil it — both for readers and journalists.
Accuracy, journalists know, is essential to credibility. But they also know producing a perfect newspaper is a distant goal. Even so, find a journalist who has a cavalier attitude about mistakes, and I will tell you he or she is someone whose days on a newspaper are numbered. Editors have a very low tolerance for errors.
Newspapers are put together from scratch each day with much of the information gathered from various sources on deadline. Opportunities for errors are myriad. But because readers and journalists place a store on credibility, responsible newspapers acknowledge errors with corrections. Most corrections and clarifications in the Union-Tribune appear on Page 2 of each section under the heading “For the record.” Sometimes, columnists correct their errors in their columns.
As readers representative, the Union-Tribune ombudsman, for the past seven years, it has been my job to oversee news corrections. I have found it humbling. One of my fears is that there will be a mistake in a correction and the fault will be mine.
So, I have an inkling of what staffers must go through when I notify them about a possible error. Even though I’m kind to the elderly, children, animals and even journalists, no staffer is wildly enthusiastic about seeing the ombudsman approach or about getting a phone call or an e-mail from me. Rarely am I the bearer of good news.
How does the newspaper learn about its errors? Sometimes reporters catch their own mistakes; sometimes other staffers point them out; sometimes sources call. Most often, however, readers are the whistle-blowers.
Factual errors are corrected, but not typos unless they are in people’s names or in figures. There is nothing automatic about a correction. First, I inform the staffer involved and ask him or her to determine if an error has been made. If it involves a story from a news service, I ask the editor who handled the story to determine if a correction has been moved or to query the news service.
Readers are usually right when they spot errors, especially if it’s an area where they have expertise. (In San Diego, because of the large military presence, if a caller says an aircraft has been misidentified, he or she is usually correct.) But, sometimes readers can be mistaken. Wednesday, Diana Mortenson, my assistant, took calls from two readers who said a caption with a front-page Associated Press picture contained incorrect information about the nationality of the soldiers. The caption identified the troops as Dutch. Both callers, who said they had served with NATO forces, claimed the soldiers were wearing patches that identified them as German.
I enlisted photographer Tony Doubek to determine whether the readers were correct. Doubek called The Associated Press and was told the soldiers were indeed Dutch but because of circumstances, there was no way to verify the information. Finally, Doubek made a color enlargement of the photo that better showed the patches the soldiers were wearing.
Clearly, they were bands of red, white and blue, the colors of the flag of the Netherlands. No correction was necessary.
But more often than not, readers are correct.
Errors I have the least patience with are incorrect telephone numbers and Web addresses. Every reporter and editor has the tools — a telephone and a computer — literally at his or her fingertips to verify both.
Another type of error that annoys me is the misidentification of people, especially children, who usually don’t get their names in the newspaper.
Even though the newspaper looks upon corrections as a way to ensure credibility, some readers take the acknowledgment of errors as a sign that the paper is error-prone.
Another way of looking at it is that the paper is diligent about correcting errors. It’s probably true that some newspapers, this one included, are printing more corrections than ever.
Prior to computerization, clippings from The San Diego Union and the Tribune were filed in envelopes. Clippings of corrections printed between 1958 and 1973 — a period of 15 years and long before the 1992 merger of the two newspapers — are in a single envelope, and not exactly one that is bulging.
The first correction on file is from The San Diego Union and is dated Oct. 12, 1958. It corrected the date of nuptials. On April 9, 1959, the Tribune printed its first correction on file and called it “an apology.” Some copies of the front page were printed with experimental type and accidentally delivered to a few homes. Two days later, another item appeared explaining that the photos that appeared with the experimental type were unrelated to the captions.
Now, when a correction appears, it is appended to the computer copy of the article in the newspaper archives. The information sets the record straight and alerts a reporter doing a subsequent story on the same topic not to repeat the error. That’s the last thing anyone wants to do.
