CORRECTING MISTAKES IN THE MEDIA
The Los Angeles Times has published a correction on its website today regarding a recent story.
"A photo caption accompanying Sunday's Travel section story about Bangkok hotels described a photo as showing guests by a swimming pool at the Shangri-La Hotel. The pool pictured is on the roof of the Buddy Lodge on Khaosan Road."
I don't know either hotel or their pool personally but I hope there would be a noticeable difference between the five star Shangri-La where rooms are upwards of US$175 per night, and the Buddy Lodge which, although dubbed the best boutique hotel on Khaosan Road, starts at less than 2,000 baht (US$75) per night.
I am very much in favor of newspapers and magazines correcting mistakes. Very few Thai publications do this, mainly I suspect because of the 'loss of face' in admitting something was wrong in the first place.
2 comments:
That's comic gold. Imagine the correction if a similar mistake were made the other way around:
"A photo caption accompanying Sunday's Travel story about American hotels described a photo as showing guests by a swimming pool at the Beverly Hills Hilton. The pool pictured is in the basement of the Reseda Motel 6."
I wonder if Thai publications don't make corrections simply because there's no professional pressure to do so, and little risk of any public backlash if they don't.
It's not like you have to run corrections front page above the fold, just bury them a couple page in like everybody does. So I wouldn't think it's about loss of face so much.
This assumes that they care about getting the facts straight, which depending on the publication may not be a primary goal at all.
I must disclaim all of this by saying I don't know what I'm talking about, though.
My company publishes a Thai language edition of BusinessWeek magazine and we make a point of correcting any errors, both factual and translations, every month. I think it helps our readers to understand how much we value accuracy but it also helps our journalists too.
Rikker, I think you're right about the lack of pressure to correct any mistakes in most of the Thai media. "It's been published so why bother?" Unless they're forced to do so I don't think most newspapers or magazines will make a point of highlighting the fact they got something wrong.
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