98% Newspaper Mistakes Go Uncorrected

I have just read that 98% newspaper mistakes go uncorrected and that's not good news to millions of readers who have been led to accept the news media as the best source for correct information.

Jean Yves Chainon of the Editors weblog said:


Editors Weblog

Hello Orikinla
Would you know of how to submit a poem to any of these News Dailies? I am particularly interested in The Guardian.

I think the problem most newspaper organisations have is that they are understaffed so they don't have enough sub editors and proof readers.  When the few on duty are overworked and tired, they would be unlikely to spot errors that may be right under their noses.

The report was on newspapers in the US and they have enough hands to correct all the mistakes before going to press. But, they have actually failed to do their best.

Newspapers in Nigeria would be worse.

The best newspapers in English are the dailies published in the UK. Fleet Street is still the best standard for print journalism.
British journalists and writers are better than American journalists and writers in English.

@poster
well i guess u made your post here so dat we nairalanders can criticise u abi? so dont feel bad.

meanwhile is your list in any particular order of wealth? say from richest to,  or are dy just rich ppl?

To the originator of this thread, I humbly and good-naturedly submit your initial posting (to which I've taken the liberty of adding emphasis by way of bold print).

Is not "media" a plural noun and "source" a singular reference to it?   

Joking aside, what's more disturbing to me is not so much the typos and grammatical errors in print journalism, but rather the egregiously misstated information.  Some "facts" are created from specious logic in attempts to affirm their validity.  Some are long-held beliefs that are simply not verified.  Some are wrongly used as a point of reference to "connect" with the reader.  Of course, these apologia do not justify their existence. 

Indeed, it is a problem.  How must it be addressed?

The Punch is a very good example of such paper in Nigeria

I don't know about the statistics but I must say that Nigerian Newspapers are horrendous in terms of spelling and grammatical mistakes. I get angry just reading some of them! I just can't imagine my little brother reading that and learning to write like that. It's a NEWSPAPER for God's sake! You'd think there's some standard, a reputation to preserve, an impression to make. But NOOOO,,,,they can get just anyone to put lots of word together in any order and call it an article. I thought a journalist would at least GRADUATE from uni. But it shouldn't be surprising, the education level in Nigeria nowadays is shocking. Even the TEACHERS write crappy English so what can we expect of the students that learn from them?

If its just an occasional mistake, it's easy to turn a blind eye on it. But when you find about fifteen mistakes in ONE article you start to think maybe there's something wrong! I know better than to read Nigerian newspapers in my parents presence because I'll probably annoy them by fuming aloud at every mistake. The mistakes irritate them too but I suppose I get too vocal about it.