Robert Rector’s 2015 list of news media corrections

Robert Rector marks the end of each year with a compilation of the best, or worst, or most convoluted, or contrived, or outrageous, or downright silly media corrections. The 2015 list contains some of the standouts from the past decade:

“We said that, in the American TV drama ‘24,’ Jack Bauer, the counter-terrorism agent, resorted to electrocution to extract information. You cannot extract information from someone who has been electrocuted because they are dead.” --- The Guardian, UK.

“Reporter Amanda Hess, in a story published Monday, acknowledges she wrongly wrote that ‘one in three black men who have sex with me is HIV positive.’ In fact, the statistic applies to black men ‘who have sex with men.’” --- Washington Citypaper.

“The following corrects errors in the July 17 geographical agent and broker listing: Aberdeen is in Scotland, not Saudi Arabia; Antwerp is in Belgium, not Barbados; Belfast is in Northern Ireland, not Nigeria; Cardiff is in Wales, not Vietnam; Helsinki is in Finland, not Fiji; Moscow is in Russia, not Qatar.” ---- Business Insurance magazine.

“This post originally quoted photographer Tom Sanders as saying it takes him five years to get on the dance floor. It takes him five beers.” Slate magazine.

“A Bloody Mary recipe…called for 12 ounces of vodka and 36 ounces of tomato juice. The recipe as printed incorrectly reversed the amounts, calling for 36 ounces of vodka and 12 ounces of tomato juice.” --- Wall Street Journal.

“Correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified the number of years E.B. White wrote for The New Yorker. It was five decades, not centuries.” ---The New York Times.

More here