Comments on: Ooops … Weekender makes wrong results call

By: Wineou

Wineou — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:18:25 +0000

Hi John

I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I’m pretty sure Paul was commenting on Tony’s “piece” and not my comment.

The only reason I bothered to mention Tony’s error was that he was highlighting someone else’s mistake, and it is not a good idea to make an error of your own when pointing out another’s error. Especially when in doing so you misquote the very headline in question.

From my limited acquaintance with his writings I gather that Tony normally writes impeccable prose, and I thought his finding and reproducing the 1948 Chicago Tribune mistake was excellent work. I was merely trying to poke a little gentle fun at his slip-up.

By: Tony Lankester

Tony Lankester — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:15:15 +0000

An interesting footnote to the story is this: Even though the story was clearly wrong, The Weekender continues to perpetuate it by leaving the erroneous story up on their website (http://www.businessday.co.za/weekender/article.aspx?ID=BD4A987560) Of course this gives rise to another debate – is a newspaper’s website a record of what was printed, and therefore should remain warts (mistakes) and all; or should it, as a live channel that is easily updated and fixed, be corrected? I don’t know the answer to that. I know of instances where newspapers, facing legal action for something they had printed, removed the offending piece from their site (the recent Guardian column on Jacob Zuma is an example of this, if I’m not mistaken). Clearly The Weekender example is not a legally actionable error, but it does damage the newspaper’s credibility.
I think they should have taken it down or at least printed an apology at the start of the article if they wanted it to remain as a permanent digital record of the print edition.

By: Thapelo

Thapelo — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:09:16 +0000

The weekender made two mistakes on the same edition, they claimed the above and secondly they claimed that ANC is going to achieve more than 70%.

By: John

John — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:42:03 +0000

Hi Paul and Wineou…

I disagree that Wineou’s comment is blessed with great insight and analysis (no offence)… The oops he refers to is a typo, far cry from printing as fact the outcome of a national election….

By: Paul Whelan

Paul Whelan — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:52:00 +0000

Nice piece, and showing a good deal more understanding than some of the comments.

Your last two paragraphs are very fair though perhaps it is precisely because resources for insight and analysis are lacking that the news has to be souped up.

By: Wineou

Wineou — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:07:17 +0000

You wrote: “DA reports to coalition. . .” when you meant to say “DA resorts. . .”

So you are also guilty of making an “Ooops”.

And while I’m quoting things, here’s one you might enjoy: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you need to concentrate on.” – Robert Strauss

By: Mwenebobo

Mwenebobo — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:45:49 +0000

It’s worse on the international news channels. ‘Breaking News’ interrupts the programme you have been looking forward to the whole week. It’s not usually all that important either. Having broken into a 30 minute programme with a 2 minute clip they then fill in the rest of the programme with one reporter asking another about what will happen, what so and so will do, how will he react etc etc. Pure speculation. Cr-p!

By: C

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:08:44 +0000

The media were either dazzled by Cope or blinded by leftist hate of the DA and its o-so-boring four-decade long battle against racism, ideology and corruption that it misread the facts on the ground.
Kinda failed the ink-blot test.

By: Hugh Robinson

Hugh Robinson — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:31:33 +0000

Untrained correspondents, lacking integrity are a huge problem in S.A. Half educated, politicised to a point of bias, and willing to put spin {BS} on everything has caused a profound drop in standards.

It is the only part of the great ANC plan that did not work to perfection. The control of the press using aligned Cadre.

By: al

al — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:23:41 +0000

Its unbelievable to think about the impact media mistakes can make – anybody who disagrees need only think about the misqouting of the judge after the shaik trial and think about what an effect that had on south africas whole political landscape.