When I reached the office Wednesday, I found the following message from a reporter. “Gina: I misread an almanac item and incorrectly reported the date of the first human on the moon. I said June 20, 1969, rather than July 20, 1969. The moon, incidentally, is where I wish I were this morning.”
A correction appeared Friday in Currents. Readers who pointed out the error were baffled. How could the newspaper make such a mistake, they asked. Some were kinder than others.
My intent is not to embarrass the already red-faced reporter. Gaffes like that cause angst. Some journalists would sacrifice a byline to avoid the feeling that comes with an error like this. It’s not just because they know credibility hinges on accuracy. With a newspaper, an error doesn’t disappear. There’s a lasting printed record — that can be repeated and that can haunt a journalist.
Also, with a newspaper the size of The San Diego Union-Tribune mistakes are seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Some journalists mentally beat themselves up about errors. They’re almost obsessive in going over what went wrong. Those are the ones who take pride in their work and are genuinely concerned about their credibility as well as the newspaper’s. Of course, the less professional dismiss errors, no matter how serious, and never learn. They just shrug their shoulders and look for (and find) excuses.
Systems are in place designed to catch errors before they see print, but mistakes slip through nonetheless. And the person who originated the error needs to take responsibility.
While some may be unconcerned about errors, they are wrong if they think readers don’t care or forget about them. Readers sometimes say “if I can’t trust you on the small stuff, how can I trust you on the big stuff?”
At the Union-Tribune, the aim is to correct errors, mainly to set the record straight but also to avoid having them repeated by unsuspecting reporters who sometimes pick up information from old news stories. Because of the nature of the business and new issues every day, I’ve found the longer it takes to verify correct information, the more there’s a chance the error will go uncorrected.
Journalists are realistic enough to know that no newspaper is going to be perfect, that the odds of putting out an error-free newspaper may be impossible. But that does not mean editors aren’t bothered by errors and don’t want to reduce the number.
Now and then, there are some errors that could be amusing if they weren’t so awful. Last Monday, on the cover of Currents was a story about British conductor-oboist Douglas Boyd. With the story there was a photo of Boyd playing the oboe. Fine so far.
Also illustrating the piece was a photo of a musical instrument and a detailed description that included its classification, history, how it’s played, usage, and even the price. The headline said: “OH BOY, AN OBOE.” Wrong, as reader after reader told me. It was an English horn.
The writer was not consulted about the photo that was selected by a page designer and winced when calls came from readers who thought she, whose job it is to critique music, didn’t know the difference between the two instruments.
The difference was immediately visible to anyone who studied the two photos. The instrument Boyd was shown playing in the photo was smaller and shaped differently at the tip. It turns out the English horn is in the oboe family but has a deeper pitch than what is commonly known as an oboe.
And then, there was the June 13 graphic in anticipation of Flag Day. It demonstrates how uncorrected errors can be repeated. The same mistake happened last year.
David Graham noticed the error again this year and wrote to the Union-Tribune, as did others. The graphic said: “In front of an audience, put U.S. flag to the speaker’s right if the flag is on podium. If the flag is on the level of the audience it goes on the audience’s right (speaker’s left).”
That may have been true at one time, Graham pointed out, but it is no longer. Now, “our flag goes to the right of the speaker, whether it is on a podium level or the floor level.”
The erroneous information was taken from a graphic used last year. This year’s graphic was designed differently, but it repeated the same wrong information. The information has been fixed in a computer file so that if next year, there’s a need for a Flag Day graphic, the updated information will be available. I don’t think that’s enough, however. It seems to me all the information should be verified whenever it is used.
