Walmart's New Health Food Push: Is It Too Hard to Swallow?
Bonds Are a 'Safe' Investment: A Big Lie Gets Even BiggerThe U.S. budget deficit is projected to total $1.2 trillion this year. A page-one World-Wide news summary in some editions Jan. 8 incorrectly put the figure at $1.2 billion.
Oops! The difference is only a factor of 1,000 but once you get over the $700 billion mark, does it really even matter? And since we're just going to be printing the money anyway -- we certainly don't have it sitting around -- and foisting the bill on future generations, who cares?
But that got me thinking: How many other brilliant newspaper errors have there been? It turns out that there's an entire website devoted to them. Log-on to Regret The Error and check out their best corrections of 2008. The best correction of the year goes to The Daily Mail:
In articles published on 23 and 26 May 2008, we gave the impression that Mr Gest had contracted a sexually transmitted infection and alleged that he had Liza Minnelli's dog killed without her knowledge. This was wrong. David Gest has never had a sexually transmitted infection and did not have Ms Minnelli's dog killed. We apologise to Mr Gest for any embarrassment caused.
But I'm giving the best error of all-time award goes to The New York Times which published this gem in 2002:
An article on Nov. 10 about animal rights referred erroneously to an island in the Indian Ocean and to events there involving goats and endangered giant sea sparrows that could possibly lead to the killing of goats by environmental groups. Wrightson Island does not exist; both the island and the events are hypothetical figments from a book (also mentioned in the article), ''Beginning Again,'' by David Ehrenfeld. No giant sea sparrow is known to be endangered by the eating habits of goats.
Goldman Earnings Sink After Buffett Dividend
Johnson & Johnson's Income Falls 23%
Burberry Shares Leap on Sales Update
