A reader with the eyes of a falcon prompted my favorite correction in the last few months. In a 1940s photograph of a young boy reading a page of newspaper cartoons, he noticed that the wording in the cartoons was indecipherable. What to the rest of us was just squiggly faded script, the reader saw as words printed backward, suggesting that the photo had been reversed.
Feeling much like Sherlock Holmes, or more perhaps Inspector Clouseau, I needed a mirror in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other to see that, yes, the reader was absolutely correct.
The flipped image made no difference in the accompanying article but what is heartening is that the anonymous reader who left the voice mail felt confident that we would care about such a mistake.
We do. While no harm resulted from the mistake (we have told the photo syndicate that supplied it of the problem), the principle is important. Our photo ethics policy states: “The power of photojournalism lies in the fact that photographs are perceived as documents of truth. It is our intention to respect that premise and preserve it.”
Truth, that goal, that sometimes elusive attempt to capture what actually happened, what someone actually said, what current events signify, is always demanding and in many cases in dispute.
Do we make mistakes? All the time. (Let anyone who lives without making mistakes cast the first e-mail.) But our goal in correcting those errors is to promote credibility, because without credibility, what does a newspaper possess?
A Sunday edition chosen at random showed, with the indispensable aid of a Nexis computer program, that the newspaper published 200,079 words of news and commentary that day, easily the size of a serious novel, along with 168 photographs.
Given the amount of reporting and editing involved, it is not surprising that sometimes readers notice an error, often a simple typing mistake, transposed or dropped letters. The word “villain,” for instance, appeared in a headline as “villian.” One more oops that made for puzzling reading was when a writer referred to “teutonic” rather than “tectonic” shifts.
Another reader, Bill Gershon, noted that a headline described former Illinois Gov. George Ryan as a “convicted felon.” Well, there is no other kind of felon.
There are some whopper grammatical errors, and while it makes editors cringe, we appreciate the effort when readers take note, just as Cece Forrester did of “an egregiously misplaced apostrophe” in the headline “Study pan’s expense of Chicago program.”
And what can you say when someone writes “a plum” instead of aplomb?
The corrections and clarifications column on Page 2 deals with those errors of fact and signals that the story has been corrected in the newspaper’s archives so that it is not repeated. The clarifications are often used to help provide proper context because sometimes the problem is not technically an error but the omission of critical information from the story.
There are many possible reasons for errors; it could be faulty note taking, a misheard word, simple oversight or the original source got it wrong. My colleague Margaret Holt, the senior editor for standards, analyzes the type and frequency of errors to check for any troublesome patterns. She also points out that the goal is not to assess blame but to improve the system and the newspaper.
Airlines use redundancy–people double-checking and backup mechanical systems–to ensure safety. At the newspaper, we check for accuracy, and when mistakes are made, we aim for transparency in correcting and clarifying.
Not every perceived error, however, is actually wrong. I received many messages charging a headline “Just deserts for revamped Soldier Field” was wrong, wrong, wrong and the word should be spelled “desserts.”
Actually, the headline writer was correct. In the wonderful world of English usage, when used in the expression “just deserts,” the word goes back to a Latin root word meaning to deserve punishment or a reward, not to the French root for the sweet delight at the end of a meal, “dessert.”
Often readers will call, write or e-mail when they disagree with an interpretation or the order in which the facts and events are presented. It’s important to consider their thoughts but not every point of view can be reconciled. Sometimes there is no compromise or middle ground on which to agree.
That is especially true of hot-button issues, the most recent about publishing articles on national security efforts by the Bush administration that have been kept secret, and the difficult questions surrounding illegal immigration.
Reporting on religion, a topic I’ll address in a future column, is a guaranteed generator of impassioned letters and calls. I look forward to the observations of other sharp-eyed readers.
