An entry in the Corrections and Clarifications column on August 15, 2008, read:
* * A correction published in yesterday’s paper has produced critical and caustic comments from readers, for it repeated some of the mistakes sought to be corrected. I have received no satisfactory explanation about how the mistakes, in the article and in the correction, occurred. The editorial desk says it was aware of what was being published and did not make any change. The technical side says it was not responsible. It appears to be a freak, which needs further study.
For the record, this is what the correction said:
“Some readers have pointed out that in Hasan Suroor’s article, “Here is the “sunny” side of economic crunch,” (Op-Ed page, August 13, 2008), some of the words do not have “variant spellings” but only the normal ones. Hasan Suroor clarifies that the original copy read as follows: “Frustrated by his students’ poor spelling, a British academic has controversially suggested falling back on that oldest trick in the book: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Ken Smith of Buckinghamshire New University wants pundits to agree on a set of “variant spellings” of some of the more commonly misspelt words such as “thier” for “their,” “arguement” for “argument,” “twelth” for “twelfth,” “truely” for “truly” and — horror of horrors — “speach” for “speech”! His argument is that these (and a host of other) words are so routinely misspelt that it is best to accept the “variant spellings” instead of moaning about them.””
In the same article, a word “dosh” has readers asking what it means. It is a British informal word for money.
2-a)This error refuses to go: The opening paragraph of “R.K. Pachauri removed as TERI head” (July 24, 2015) erroneously referred to Mr. Pachauri as a “Nobel laureate.” It was an editing error. We repeat the clarification issued in this column on June 23, 2009; December 23, 2008; June 12, 2008; May 13, 2008 and February 20, 2008: “Merci Olsson, Marketing and Communications Manager, Nobelprize.org, Sweden (the official website of the Nobel Foundation) clarifies that the recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and not R.K. Pachauri. Mr. Pachauri participated in the award ceremony as a chairman of the IPCC. (The 2007 Peace Nobel was also shared by Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.)”
2-b) In spite of carrying the correction above, on January 16, 2016, the Corrections and Clarifications column had to carry this
It haunts you through the years: Even the Diary of Events 2015 (supplied along with The Hindu on January 14, 2016) has not been spared. Climate scientist R.K. Pachauri has been described as a Nobel laureate. He is not. The fact: the organisation he chaired — Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — shared the Nobel prize with the former U.S. Vice-President, Al Gore, in 2007. We are dismayed to point out that the error was notified in this column on July 27, 2015; June 23, 2009; December 23, 2008; June 12, 2008; May 13, 2008; and February 20, 2008.
When this office erred:
3-a) The Hindu is committed to accuracy, to acknowledging its mistakes, and it is the stated policy of the paper to correct significant errors as quickly as possible. While we at the Office of the Readers’ Editor do our best to get the facts right before carrying a correction or a clarification, sometimes we err. And readers note that too. A couple of examples below illustrate a correction we carried and a subsequent amendment to it:
A correction entry said: A letter under the heading “Republic Day 2015” (Letters to the Editor, Jan. 28, 2015) said the Constitution was finalised in 1951. It should have been 1950.
Alas, we were wrong there. In the next day’s Corrections and Clarifications column, we had to say: We erred: In an entry in the Corrections and Clarifications column (Jan. 29, 2015) about a letter on “Republic Day 2015” - which said the Constitution was finalised in 1951 – we corrected the year to 1950. Actually, the Constitution was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949. It came into effect on January 26, 1950.
3-b) Writing about our own errors, the Readers’ Editor said: We err too: My weekly columns have been corrected for errors too. Instead of 543 constituencies, I wrongly wrote 534 Lok Sabha constituencies; I got the nationality of the philosopher John Rawls wrong; and instead of using the word ‘malaise’, I wrote ‘malice’. In the Corrections and Clarifications column, we have made amends many times in the last nine years. When the mistake happened at our end, the amended correction generally said: “We erred”.
Errors creep into “From The Archives” section too
The Corrections and Clarifications column (Feb, 16, 2016) had referred to an error in the “From The Archives” column of Feb. 12, 2016. It was erroneously said the entries were from the pages of The Hindu dated February 12, 2016. Actually, they were from February 12, 1966
When numbers met media ethics
In a rare gesture, mathematician Amitabha Bagchi, IIT Delhi, writing in response to “Virus in the viral content” (February, 23, 2015), came up with a mathematical model to tackle the malaise of rumour and reaffirmed faith in credible news ecology.
They were always right
Three readers, whose nose for “bloomers in printed news” is legendary: M. Nagarajan (nagaas1948@gmail.com ), Dr. Raghavendran, [maniyurr@yahoo.com ], and Narayanan [csniyer77@aol.com ].
When a headline was at gross variance with the text
A Business page news analysis on petrol becoming more expensive as a consequence of higher state taxes and central duties (Feb. 4, 2016) was headlined: “With aviation fuel costlier than petrol, it’s now cheaper to fly than ride a bike.” The readers were quick to notice and inform us of the mismatch between the headline and the content. The headline was corrected to read: “Fuel tax rates result in two-wheeler owners paying more per litre than airlines.”
Why a Corrections and Clarifications column?
Not infallible but trustworthy a column by the Readers’ Editor(Oct. 3, 2015) referred to a series of avoidable errors found in the paper within a week. The act of acknowledging and rectifying mistakes renders the publication trustworthy.
How do you respond when a person of eminence doubts your accuracy?
The Readers Editor column on April 6, 2015, “A newspaper of record”, dealt probingly into doubts about the date of an Editorial of March 24, 1931 on the execution of Bhagat Singh and his colleagues in Lahore. On March 23, 2015, the 84th anniversary, of the execution, The Hindu reproduced that Editorial. This was warranted because of the doubts expressed by no less a person than Prof. Chaman Lal, one of the foremost chroniclers of Bhagat Singh’s life.
