Tag Archives: Craig-Silverman

| Media, On the Net

Regret the Error year in review

Regret the Error's typo of the year

Regret the Error's typo of the year

Montreal writer Craig Silverman, editor of news corrections website Regret the Error (and author of the book by the same name) has released his review of the best media errors and corrections from 2008.

Among the highlights:

  • David Gest did not get herpes from Liza Minnelli
  • Dance poles at the Condom Shack may, in fact, support the weight of a human
  • The Los Angeles Times getting conned into writing a feature story filled with false information about Tupac Shakur (which was later debunked by The Smoking Gun)
  • Headline turns Bon Jovi into “Bob Jovi” (though, frankly, I’ve made worse errors that have made it into much larger type)
  • “Democratic vice-presidential prick in 2000” Joe Lieberman
  • Bob Novak announcing “he has a brain”
  • At least one that-wasn’t-his-mistress-that-was-his-daughter story
  • The Calgary Sun correcting the record: GM does not support neo-Nazis
  • Bill O’Reilly is not a “right-wing pundit”
  • Recipe accidentally calls for poisonous ingredient
  • A copy editor’s joke about strangling a kitten accidentally makes it to print (and the editor gets fired)
  • Israel will hit, not eat, Iran
  • From the Ottawa Sun: David Hoe was never a sex worker
  • Amercan Family Association website automatic filter for AP stories turns “Tyson Gay” into “Tyson Homosexual”
  • Wall Street Journal gets Canada’s name wrong. Twice.

It also mentions the Paris Match province-vs-city mistake on Quebec’s 400th anniversary.

| Blogosphere, TV

Local bloggers on Test the Nation

Test the Nation

Bored? CBC’s latest rendition of Test The Nation just finished on TV (though you can take the test online). Among the six teams fighting it out in studio were “bloggers” (Here are their mugshots). The team includes some well-known Montrealers:

Nulman has guaranteed that the blogger group will be victorious over celebrity look-alikes, cab drivers, backpackers, chefs and flight crews. Can they pull it off? Considering how skewed the questions are toward technology trivia (there’s even an entire section on it), I wouldn’t be surprised…

UPDATE: 26 questions in, and the bloggers are leading.

UPDATE: Nulman breathes a sigh of relief, as the bloggers easily take the competition with an average score of 50/60. Highest is Rick Spence at 57. I scored a still-respectable 47.

UPDATE: The CBC actually does a pretty darn decent job rounding up the post-test blogger reaction. They also put up some fun statistical stuff (StatsCan they are not), which shows that meateaters scored better than vegetarians, heavy Internet users scored more than light Internet users, and that Quebec outscored every other province (HA! Suck it Alberta!). The best: Nunavut. The worst: PEI.

| Blogosphere, Media, Slow News Day, TV, Video

Craig Silverman on Reliable Sources

For those who missed it, Regret the Error‘s Craig Silverman was on CNN’s Reliable Sources this weekend, shamelessly plugging his book discussing some of 2007’s most hilarious corrections:

UPDATE (Jan. 6): The Gazette’s Bill Brownstein also writes about Silverman, crediting him as having been interviewed by CNN for his newspaper-corrections expertise.