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Robert H. Goddard
Born
The New York Times corrects its 1920 mockery of his rocket science (1969)
On January 13, 1920, a Times editorial-page feature sneered that Goddard seemed to lack "the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools" for thinking a rocket could work in a vacuum. On July 17, 1969, with Apollo 11 on its way to the Moon, the paper printed a short correction confirming that a rocket can function in a vacuum, ending with "The Times regrets the error."
It is the best-loved correction ever written because it does what a correction should: quotes the mistake, states the fact plainly and apologizes without excuses. The lesson outlasts the joke. Confidently dismissing an expert is still an error, even on the opinion page.
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Hitler Diaries
Stern and The Sunday Times publish diaries that proved to be forged (1983)
In April 1983 Stern began publishing what it presented as Hitler's own diaries, and The Sunday Times rushed to run them in Britain after historian Hugh Trevor-Roper judged them genuine. Within about two weeks West Germany's federal archive called them "grotesquely superficial fakes," on postwar paper with modern ink. Editors at both publications lost their jobs.
The lesson is secrecy. Stern kept the diaries from German experts on the war, shielding the scoop from rivals and from the checks that would have exposed it. Trevor-Roper later regretted that "the normal methods of historical verification" had been sacrificed.
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Wen Ho Lee
Born
The New York Times assesses its coverage of the Los Alamos scientist (2000)
In September 2000 the Times printed an unusual assessment of its own reporting on Lee. The editors stood by much of the work but conceded the coverage should have been "more thorough, more balanced and more skeptical," and said the blame lay "principally with those who directed the coverage."
Read it as a study in the half-step. It names a real failure, a story about one identifiable man that ran ahead of the evidence, yet stops short of calling the core reporting wrong. Note where the blame lands, too: on editors rather than the reporters. Four years later the same paper published a far larger note about Iraq, and the two are worth reading side by side.
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Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
"From the Editors: The Times and Iraq," The New York Times (2004)
On May 26, 2004, the Times admitted that its prewar reporting on Iraq's weapons had not been as rigorous as it should have been. The note said the paper had leaned on Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on regime change, and that their claims were often eagerly confirmed by US officials keen to intervene.
The stakes were a war, and the note drew criticism of its own: it named no reporters or editors, and later stories that undercut the original claims had been buried. It is the clearest case here of how sources with a motive, confirmed by officials with the same motive, can look like independent verification.
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Killian documents controversy
CBS News and the 60 Minutes Wednesday report on George W. Bush's National Guard service (2004)
The September 8, 2004, broadcast rested on memos CBS could not authenticate, and after defending them for days the network conceded it could not confirm they were genuine. An independent review found the producer had called the documents authenticated when only one expert had vouched for one signature, and cited her "myopic zeal" to get the story on air. In January 2005 CBS fired four people, the producer among them.
The review found no evidence of political bias. The failure was speed and certainty, which is why newsrooms still teach it: a scoop that hinges on documents is only as strong as the proof that they are real.
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2005 Quran desecration controversy
Newsweek retracts its Guantanamo Bay Quran report (2005)
A short Newsweek item said a military investigation had found evidence that interrogators at Guantanamo had abused the Quran. After protests broke out abroad, the source said he could no longer be sure the detail came from the report Newsweek cited. On May 16, 2005, editor Mark Whitaker retracted the story "based on what we know now," a day after saying the magazine's first apology was "not a retraction."
The case shows how much weight one unnamed source can carry, and how fast a single sentence can travel. It also shows the hard middle ground of a retraction: Newsweek withdrew the claim it could not support without establishing that nothing of the kind had happened.
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2011 Tucson shooting
NPR wrongly reports that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has died (2011)
In the chaos after the shooting on January 8, 2011, NPR reported that Giffords had been killed, and the error spread through its broadcast, website and email alerts. She had survived. NPR said the information came from two government sources, one in the Pima County Sheriff's Department, and its news chief called it "a serious and grave error," adding that in a situation so chaotic "we should have been more cautious."
Two official sources sound like plenty. This case is the standing reminder that breaking news is when sources are least reliable, and that being first with a death is never worth the risk of being wrong about one.
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Alistair McAlpine, Baron McAlpine of West Green
Born
BBC Newsnight's report that led to him being wrongly accused (2012)
On November 2, 2012, Newsnight broadcast an account of abuse at children's care homes in North Wales that pointed at an unnamed political figure. Newsnight never named him, but people online named McAlpine, the Conservative Party's former treasurer. The accuser then said he had misidentified him. The BBC apologized, its director general resigned about eight weeks into the job, and McAlpine settled with the corporation.
The lesson is that leaving out a name is not the same as protecting someone. A report can point clearly at a person, and a BBC review found that some basic journalistic checks had not been completed. Withholding a name is no substitute for checking.
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Gettysburg Address
The Patriot-News retracts its 1863 review of Lincoln's speech (2013)
In November 1863 the Harrisburg paper's predecessor, the Patriot & Union, dismissed Lincoln's address as "silly remarks" deserving "a veil of oblivion." On November 14, 2013, the 150th anniversary, the Patriot-News retracted that verdict, regretting its failure to see the speech's "momentous importance, timeless eloquence and lasting significance."
It is the funniest entry here, and a well-made one, with the retraction borrowing Lincoln's own cadence. It also started a fair argument: critics said an opinion cannot be retracted the way a wrong fact can. That distinction is worth knowing before demanding a retraction of anything.
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A Rape on Campus
Rolling Stone retracts its University of Virginia story (2015)
Rolling Stone's account of an alleged gang rape at a fraternity relied on one student, and the writer never tried to contact three of her friends, who later denied the quotes attributed to them. On April 5, 2015, after a Columbia Journalism School review found the story broke "basic, even routine journalistic practice," the magazine retracted it and apologized "to all of those who were damaged by our story."
The review found no deliberate falsification, which is why this belongs here: it is an honest failure of checking. It also leaves a hard truth on the table. Careless reporting on a serious subject does damage well beyond the people it names.
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Burlington Electric Department
The Washington Post's report that Russian hackers breached the US grid through this utility (2016)
Citing officials, the Post reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the nation's power grid via a Vermont utility. Burlington Electric said it had found malware on a single laptop that was not connected to its grid systems, and the Post added an editor's note saying the breach involved one laptop and no penetration of the grid. Investigators later found the malware was a common program, likely unrelated to any Russian campaign.
A useful case for anyone reading alarming security news: the gap between "malware on a laptop" and "the grid was hacked" is where the story went wrong, and the officials briefing the paper did not close it.
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Anthony Scaramucci
Born
CNN retracts a story tying him to a Russian investment fund inquiry (2017)
In June 2017 CNN published a single-source story saying Congress was looking into a Russian investment fund's links to Scaramucci, then a Trump adviser. Within about a day it pulled the story, said it "did not meet CNN's editorial standards" and apologized to him. Three journalists resigned, including the writer and the head of the investigations unit. Scaramucci replied: "Apology accepted. Everyone makes mistakes."
Few retractions arrive this fast or end this cleanly, and the speed is the point. CNN treated a breach of its own process as serious enough to cost senior jobs, a stricter standard than many outlets apply to themselves.
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Brian Ross (journalist)
Born
ABC News corrects his report on Michael Flynn and suspends him (2017)
In a live special report on December 1, 2017, Ross said Flynn was prepared to testify that Trump, as a candidate, had told him to contact Russians. The Dow fell more than 350 points. ABC's correction said it was as president-elect, not as a candidate, that Trump asked, and the network suspended Ross for four weeks without pay, saying the reporting had not been fully vetted through its standards process.
One word, candidate, changed the meaning of the whole story. ABC first labeled its fix a clarification before calling it a correction, a reminder that the label matters as much as the fix. Readers notice when an outlet softens what it got wrong.
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2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation
The Washington Post's editor's note on its early Covington Catholic coverage (2019)
The Post's first stories on the January 2019 encounter between Covington Catholic students and Native American elder Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial drew heavily on Phillips's account. On March 1, 2019, the paper added an editor's note saying subsequent reporting, a student's statement and additional video had either contradicted or failed to confirm that account.
The note came after student Nick Sandmann sued for $250 million, and his lawyers called it inadequate. It is a lesson in how a viral clip invites a verdict before the full picture exists, and in how a late note reads as reluctant even when it is thorough.
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Caliphate (podcast)
The New York Times's editors' note on its ISIS podcast (2020)
Caliphate, the Times's award-winning 2018 podcast, centered on a man who said he had been an ISIS executioner. On December 18, 2020, the paper said it could not show he had joined ISIS or had ever been in Syria, placed an editor's note atop each part of the series and handed back its Peabody. Executive editor Dean Baquet called it "an institutional failing," and the series' host was reassigned off the terrorism beat.
The note is a model of scope: it applies the correction to everything the flawed source touched. It is also the clearest warning here about a compelling narrator. The better the story a source tells, the harder a newsroom has to check it.
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Steele dossier
The Washington Post removes its reporting on a supposed dossier source (2021)
Stories from March 2017 and February 2019 identified businessman Sergei Millian as a source for the Steele dossier. After the November 4, 2021, indictment of Igor Danchenko, the analyst who helped compile it, the Post changed a headline, removed passages, took down a video, added editor's notes and corrected about a dozen other stories, without retracting them.
A media historian said he could not think of a comparable case. It shows that a correction can arrive years later, prompted by court filings rather than readers, and that fixing old stories in place raises its own questions about transparency.
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Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion
The New York Times's editors' note on its first coverage of the Gaza hospital blast (2023)
In its early coverage of the October 17, 2023, explosion at a hospital in Gaza City, the Times gave claims by Hamas the prominence of a headline, a news alert and social media posts. On October 23 its editors wrote that the coverage "relied too heavily on claims by Hamas" and did not make clear those claims could not immediately be verified.
The note does not settle who caused the blast; it says the paper had presented an unverified claim as news. That narrow, precise admission is the lesson. In a war, the first account usually comes from a party to it, and a headline can settle a question the evidence has not.
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