In his Regret The Error blog, Canadian freelancer Craig Silverman comes back on some of the media’s most noticed mistakes during 2007: among the top were mistakes about US politician Barack Obama, but also a Titanic picture rip-off that went around the world before being caught.

Obama was mistaken for the notorious ‘Osama’ on CNN and in a news report by the New York Post. The Houston Chronicle referred to him as a Republican and several misplaced typos could have potentially damaged his image.

The 2007 Plagiarism / Fabrication Round-Up revealed that there was a significant rise of instances of plagiarism at US student newspapers.

Many papers mistakenly referred to Middle Eastern individuals as terrorists, primarily in the UK. One of the worst cases was a Metro UK run a photo of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed and identify him as terror suspect Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed.

Silverman crowned this extract from the Independent Saturday magazine in the UK as best correction of the year:

“Following the portrait of Tony and Cherie Blair published on 21 April in the Independent Saturday magazine, Ms Blair’s representatives have told us that she was friendly with but never had a relationship with Carole Caplin of the type suggested in the article. They want to make it clear, which we are happy to do, that Ms Blair “has never shared a shower with Ms Caplin, was not introduced to spirit guides or primal wrestling by Ms Caplin (or anyone else), and did not have her diary masterminded by Ms Caplin.”

Best typo of the year, a photo caption relating to Anna Nicole Smith:

“When Redding, a longtime scout for Playboy, discovered Smith, the model could barely right a sentence…”

Perhaps most significant mistake, although it didn’t have any detrimental mistake, was the picture of a submarine used by a Russian TV network to illustrate a story about a Russian voyage to the Arctic. The same picture was redistributed by Reuters and used by NBC Nightly News before it was discovered it came from the movie Titanic.

Read the full story below.

Source: Regret The Error