Regret the Error.com has come out with it's yearly round-up of 2008's most embarrassing, egregious, and regretful media mistakes. This site, edited by author Craig Silverman, is really worth checking out!
Here are a few particularly ludicrous errors: (all information is taken from regrettheerror.com)
*Spiegel Online,the website for German newspaper Der Spiege published a "wildly exaggerated" article claiming that furniture manufacturer IKEA routinely named its most inexpensive items after Danish towns, while reserving Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian names for its high-end objects.
*The Washington Post's "Kid's Post" poetry contest published a poem titled "Horrible, Just Horrible" on April 29 and credited it to a child, but it was actually written by acclaimed children's poet Shel Silverstein.
*Jody Rosen of Slate.com exposed the rampant plagiarism of the Bulletin, a weekly Texas paper that regularly reproduced content from other news outlets, such as Rolling Stone and USA Today, supposedly written by staffer Mark Williams. "Uncovering these [plagiarized] sources," Silverman commented, "is a matter of choosing the right phrases to dump into Google, not a difficult feat for anyone moderately attuned to writerly rhythms."
New Year's is as good a time as any to reflect on the harm plagiarism, sloppy reporting and sloppier editing cause, not just to the victims of misinformation or plagiarism, but to all journalists. The press cannot afford to further damage journalistic credibility at a time when internet watchdogs and the public are rightly questioning traditional news outlets.
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