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Some things make me see red. Like yesterday, when I was reading this article about a certain federal judge’s ex-wife problem and her most recent disclosure that the FBI has asked her not to comment further (and in which she denies giving divorce files to 9News.)
The lead paragraph to the article erroneously and inexcusably said the FBI had told the judge’s ex-wife not to comment about his possible downloading of porn on his federal computer. Of course, there never was such an allegation. Such sloppy reporting!
Today, the Rocky reprints the article and the lead paragraph has been changed to read the FBI told the judge’s ex-wife not to comment on “his possible use of his federal computer to access a Web site with links to porn.”
What a huge difference between the two, accessing a portal site with links and downloading porn, and shouldn’t the Rocky have acknowledged its faux-pas? How many people read the version I did last night and won’t bother to read it again today, thinking they’ve already read it? Even worse, since the first article with the false lead paragraph is still up, how many people will continue to read that version, finding it in Google, rather than the corrected one?
The Rocky should take the first, false version down and put a correction notice in today’s revised article. It’s too big an error to just gloss over as if it was never made.
Sloppy and false reporting demands corrections, not just next-day overwrites.