I absolutely adore Poynter’s annual list of media flubs, corrections, hoaxes, and all-around drama. Most of the time they are simply hilarious and often juvenile (see picture), but sometimes they are truly awful, like this one from The Australian:
Due to a production error, a quote attributed to Lieutenant Colonel Ghulam Jehlani Shafiq in a report in The Weekend Australian on Saturday (“Afghanistan battles scourge of corruption”, page 16) was altered to change its meaning. Colonel Jehlani did not say: “It’s not like 25 years ago. I was killing everybody.” In fact, he said: “It’s not like 25 years ago I was killing everybody. At that time too we tried not to have civilian casualties.” The Australian apologises for the error.
Umm…yeah. Punctuation makes all the difference.