Why should The Hindu persist with the ‘Corrections and Clarifications’ column for years? If the system is not geared up to learn from the mistakes pointed out, what purpose does this column serve? Has the column helped to reduce errors? Does technology have a role in producing a flawless newspaper? What are the factors that contribute to obvious errors which readers are able to find out in their first reading? These were some of the probing questions from our readers.
Last week, we were inundated with phone calls and mails, when the opening paragraph of “ >Mukesh Ambani India’s richest for 9th year ” (Sept. 24, 2015) erroneously gave industrialist Mukesh Ambani’s net worth as $8.9 billion instead of $18.9 billion. On the same day, the name of the author of the Faith column titled ‘Significance of Bakrid’ was misspelt. Another slip up that could have been caught during revision was in “ >M.S. Blue sarees to adorn Cooptex shelves ” (Sept. 29, 2015). The report said that the saree got its name as it was specially women (instead of woven) for renowned singer M.S. Subbulakshmi. We shudder when we receive a mail from a Bengaluru-based reader, C.S. Narayanan. The mistakes he points out are ones that could be easily eliminated if the copy is double-checked by the desk. For instance, it just needs a second reading to spot that it was ‘crying foul’ and not ‘cring foul’.
It is not only the readers but also reporters who are at the forefront in pointing out editing errors. For instance, the correction we carried a couple of months ago under the title, ‘This error refuses to go’ — about referring to Mr. R.K. Pachauri as a “Nobel laureate” — was first pointed out by the reporter who filed the story. This issue was clarified earlier on June 23, 2009; December 23, 2008; June 12, 2008; May 13, 2008 and February 20, 2008 — that the recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and not Mr. Pachauri.
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In the Karnataka editions (September 24, 2015), a story was carried twice under two different headlines — “Need a fresh approach” and “Citizens demand accountability”. What made this particular mistake glaring was that these items were published side by side on the same page. Apart from calls and mails, I also received a note from one of the readers citing my earlier columns on this particular malaise that keeps rearing its head in myriad forms in different editions: “The Sisyphean burden” (November 3, 2014), “When coordination fails” (December 23, 2013) and “Self-regulation works” (April 28, 2014).
Earlier I had recollected the corrective steps initiated by the Editor to avoid this type of errors: “As a standing instruction to all editions, she has urged all senior editors to up their antennae with regard to reports that may have multiple points of reference. She has also directed them to be watchful against reports from the newspaper’s correspondents and agencies on the same subject being duplicated. The Editor has made it mandatory that a careful scan of all pages is done at each centre before typesetting. Specific responsibility has to be assigned to individuals in order to ensure that this works. Instances of duplication will be viewed with due seriousness and accountability with consequences enforced henceforth.” Despite the directives, repetition happens and typographical and grammatical errors appear, much to the chagrin of the editor, senior editors and readers.
This leads us to the opening set of questions. Newspaper production, like all human endeavours, is not free from frailties. It is a collaborative process where nearly 3,00, 000 words are processed for multiple editions every single day. More than 800 journalists work within a limited timeframe to give a comprehensive picture of what happened the day before.
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Screen fatigue is a particular occupational hazard for people who process words. It deceives the reader to read what he or she wants to read rather than what has been keyed in. The mind sometimes performs virtual editing where the eye reads a sentence as it ought to be rather than what it is. Reliance on technology also has its own perilous impact. For instance, earlier we had to carry an interesting correction when poet Kavimani Desiga Vinayagam Pillai became Caveman Desiga Vinayagam Pillai in print. The spell check feature in the Word document corrected the perfectly right “Kavimani” (gem among poets) to a wrong “Caveman” and we could not ascertain at what point the mistake happened. Was it there in the writer’s original copy or was it the failure of the sub-editor to notice the error the machine was introducing? The stark lesson is that all of us are humans and are capable of relying on the magic of the machine to clean our copy.
In this context, the Corrections and Clarifications column assumes importance. It recognises that the journalistic process is not infallible but it has to be accountable to its readers. The twin visible acts of acknowledging and rectifying mistakes not only set the record straight but also renders the newspaper trustworthy.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in