Dear Toronto Star: stop laying off your fact checkers

Posted on January 6, 2005
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Today the Toronto Star’s lead story is again about the rising death toll in Asia as a result of the tsunami in Search for the dead. As you may be aware, if you’ve read back a couple of days, you know that Roy Maguire has been in Thailand looking for relatives of his that have been lost.

Impressively The Star has managed to completely mangle the familial connections involved. My letter to the editors:

Good morning,

I just read with interest the remarkably factually incorrect blurb you’ve written today about close personal friends of mine in your “Search for the dead” article by Tonda MacCharles and Miro Cernetig:

“John and Jackie Knill of Vancouver were in Phuket, Thailand on Dec. 26. Close friend Roy Maguire travelled from Vancouver to Thailand this week to help in the search, his wife Kristen Maguire told the Star’s Jordan Heath-Rawlings. He found their passports, but nothing else. “People here are starting to lose hope,” Maguire said yesterday”

It’s quite clear that Jordan Heath-Rawlings has done no fact-checking before recounting these details, which is impressive given that Roy’s story has been covered by all of Canada’s major media outlets regularly for the past week, so allow me to provide some corrections:

- Roy Maguire is John Knill’s brother-in-law
- Kirsten Maguire is Roy Maguire’s daughter
- Roy Maguire’s wife is Terri Knill, sister of John Knill

I trust that a full correction of these facts will be found in tomorrow’s edition of The Toronto Star and that the online story will be corrected immediately.

Cheers,
Chris Cummer

Remember folks: don’t believe everything you read.

Update: The Star has updated its online version of this story, a correction will be going out tomorrow, The Star has sent a very gracious apology to Kirsten, and their ombudsman emailed me back with an apology and the assurance of corrections as well. Factually incorrect though they may be, The Star is nothing if not speedy in its corrections process.

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