Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Corrections And Other Fact-Based Journalism

It's Regret the Error's annual round-up, with this year's "correction of the year" award going to Dave Barry for this explanation:
In yesterday’s column about badminton, I misspelled the name of Guatemalan player Kevin Cordon. I apologize. In my defense, I want to note that in the same column I correctly spelled Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarak, Poompat Sapkulchananart and Porntip Buranapraseatsuk. So by the time I got to Kevin Cordon, my fingers were exhausted.
The operator of this site also has named an annual prize after the long-time author of the British The Guardian's corrections, since he sets the standard:
Deep depression: Our economics editor has officially gone from recession to depression. By mangling the names of two of history’s most highly decorated economists, John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, we not only created an economy of truth but blamed poor Milton Keynes for having “crazy” ideas (We can all learn from Depression, Opinion, page 21, September 29). Milton Keynes is an English town famous not only for its grid system of roads and its herd of concrete cows but because in 1998 it was deemed so boring that even chartered accountants refused to move there. The “crazy” ideas comment was intended for John Maynard Keynes, who was voted one of Time Magazine’s most important people of the 20th century - and who was not boring.
Altogether, the entire piece qualifies as the best read I've had in a long time.

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