News organizations make it a point not to repeat the original error that was made; we take pains to state the corrected information only in a correction.
k
On 4/21/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
James D. Forrester wrote:
Using the {{office}} template to tag problem content is a nice idea, but, I would imagine, has a rather serious drawback: Wikitruth.info (amongst other 'helpful' critics) seems to have a sysop working for them. Were we to flag an article that was libellous with {{office}}, you can bet that they would go and dig out the deleted sections, and repost it to their wonderful service. Now Wikimedia has been informed that they are likely to be sued, and in response has done something knowing that it would increase the publication and spread of this libel. - we're then liable for their reposting of the content, and "utterly screwed". I know, I know, "that's not what was intended". Well, tough, that's the way the Real World(tm) works.
No, that isn't at all how the Real World works. In the Real World, when someone is accused of libel, they do exactly what we do: Take down the content and post a prominent notice that it was taken down. Often the original content is actually republished along with an apology; something like: "We claimed in our issue of November 2 that Dr. Smith was indicted for fraud; in fact, he was merely investigated by a grand jury and never indicted; we regret the error."
As far as I know no media organization has been actually sued (at least not successfully) for that.
-Mark
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