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Newspapers
Making corrections, handling statisticsPosted by Joel Martinsen, February 14, 2007 11:48 PM
![]() The topic concerns a newspaper's correction and clarification column, but Teng touches on statistics reporting as well. Ironically, the Mirror wrote Teng Yun's surname as 藤 rather than 滕 in the byline, a mistake it has not yet corrected. What happens when a newspaper makes an error?by Teng Yun / MirrorAn acceptable upper limit for the error rate of a newspaper is 0.05%. That is to say, it is acceptable for a few dozen typos to appear in a newspaper every day. And I can be certain that every newspaper published in China most definitely contains an error every day. I'm willing to make a wager if you don't believe me. There's a magazine called Yaowen Jiaozi in Shanghai that makes its living by picking errors out of newspapers. If you make a mistake then fix it, that's a good boy. This is the natural duty of a newspaper as well. However, the people who run newspapers apparently don't realize this. Generally speaking, mistakes don't work well with one's self-respect; hence, they're not very willing to directly acknowledge their error and frequently dance around the issue instead. They may use the "at the request of the other party" technique to hide their shame, or they may simply pretend not to notice. The interested reader is welcome to take a look at corrections columns in various newspapers, where they may discover which ones take a decent attitude toward this, and which ones would do anything to save face. The 4 February 1977 issue of People's Daily had an article titled "Take care to confirm the veracity of information." The piece was not long:
What can be learned from People's Daily is not only their readiness to correct mistakes as they learn of them, but their comprehensive, objective principles of editing as well. Looking carefully, this letter points out two factual discrepancies: one, the number and extent of money-losing farms; two, the amount of profit handed over. More important, however, is the fact that while the facts provided in the materials from the Zhanjiang Agriculture Bureau may be true, they are logically contradictory - if there are many money-losing farms, then naturally less profit will be turned in. So, as an editor, should you respect the facts, or respect logic? Generally speaking, people running newspapers like to work according to logic; if the facts violate their own sense of logic, then nine out of ten editors will use their own logic to guide the facts. So then, is this kind of newspaper still objective? On this point alone, many newspapers today ought to learn from the People's Daily of 30 years ago. Links and Sources
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Comments on Making corrections, handling statistics
Comrade Joel:
In the February 14, 2007, edition of Danwei, 11:48 PM, the letter about Guangdong's state-run farms titled "Take care to confirm the veracity of information." contains the following year: "1997". This part of the translation is untrue. The original says "1977". We hope that you will take care to confirm the accuracy of translation.
(just kidding. thanks for yet another interesting piece.)
Well, sure. Once I decided to point out the Mirror's typo, it was inevitable that I'd make my own stupid mistake. Thanks for not being too cruel.
I'd don't quite see that it's impossible for both parts of the statement from the Zhanjiang Agriculture Bureau to be correct. They have both more loss-making farms than reported but also have turned over more money overall, if say, the overall combined earnings were much higher than in the PD article,
Of course, your first suspicion is it was just them wily Cantonese trying to shirk their glorious Socialist duty to prop up the rest of the (then)shaky national economy.
I was actually hoping that some reader would clue me in as to the true lesson we should learn from the PD editors - I think the author may have been going for some veiled commentary on current statistical reporting practices - i.e. just let'em report the damn numbers already.