ERRATUM SLIPS SHOWING
The media: Paul Johnson
laments errors in print, including his own
SELDOM in my life have I been so mortified as last week, when I examined a newly-minted copy of my latest book and discovered that the biographical note on the flap of the dust-jacket stated that I had edited 'both the New Statesman and The Spectator'. Delighted as I am to write for this review, I have never sought inclusion among the illustrious ranks of its editors. Had I been, not for the first time, conflated with George Gale? Or, more likely, was the fact that I had not seen a proof of the jacket one more lamentable consequence of the wretched postal strike?
How do such mistakes occur? One may well ask. Last week the Times, which has paid a lot of money for the T. S. Eliot letters and was hoping to create quite a stir by their publication, marked the occasion by illustrating them with a drawing not of poor Eliot but of James Joyce. I would have liked to have seen the expression on Charlie Wilson's face when he spotted that one. In my experience, egregious errors have not much correlation to the trouble taken to prevent them. Indeed there is something mysterious about the really devastating ones. My first job, 25 years ago, was on a Paris magazine which prided itself on its technical perfection. In those days the merest misprint was subjected to a post-publication inquest, rather like those courts of inquiry you had in the army when some idiot lost a compass. Not long after I started work there we ran a magnificent photo of a new airliner right across the top of a double-page spread. It was thoroughly checked in a whole series of successive Proofs. Then, when the entire issue had been irretrievably printed, we found to our horror that the aircraft was upside down. I can still remember the editor's impressive dance of rage when the full dimensions of the disaster registered. We never disco- vered exactly how it happened.
Most libels occur through error rather than malice. But the margin of error, in Some cases, is so enormous as to baffle the imagination. I treasure an editorial correc- tion which the painter Burne-Jones culled from a Massachusetts paper. It read: 'In- stead of being arrested, as we stated, for kicking his wife down a flight of stairs and hurling a lighted kerosene lamp after her, the Revd James P. Wellman died unmar- ried four years ago.' Of course the Revd Mr Wellman, being dead, could not sue. But most victims of mistaken identity in the prints can and do. A friend of mine, a distinguished former City chairman, has the same name as a less reputable financial colleague. His mug-shot adorned an account of the other fellow's misdeeds, and he duly collected a handsome solatium. Such mistakes occur much more often than the reader realises. And newspapers are often careless about telling home truths about notorious figures under the impress- ion they are no more. When Dr Bodkin Adams was finally restored to the medical register, long accounts of his life were published; they somehow lingered in the memory as obituaries. While I was an editor, we ran a paragraph deploring the Chancellor's handling of the sick pound sterling which, we said, 'had a touch of the Bodkin Adams about it'. 'Are you sure', I asked the author, 'that Adams is dead?' 'Dead as a doornail, old boy.' Well he was not and, quick as a flash, his attorney was onto us. I decided to settle immediately and without argument and was 'let off with £400, 'less than the doctor's normal tariff,' I was told, 'being as you are so prompt'.
Such episodes terrify editors, for they feel they can never go to bed at night without, as it were, shutting their eyes to an unknown time-bomb which will explode the next day. Being human, they are less worried about non-libellous errors which merely offend against truth and taste. The late Philip Hope-Wallace, the most exact and discerning of critics, suffered grievous- ly from howlers foisted upon him by Guardian printers and subs. Some particu- larly rankled. He always dictated his notices from a call-box and concluded one: 'The orchestra rounded off the evening with a frisky performance of Elgar's over- ture In the South.' Then he added: 'Ends.' 'Right you are, matey.' This duly appeared as 'a risque performance of Elgar's over- ture In Southend'. 'The only time they managed to put in the acute accent, too,' said Philip sadly. What irritated him most was the theory, then held in some Guar- dian quarters, that the reader's eye auto- matically readjusted the misprints in his copy. 'Don't you worry yourself, Mr Hope- Wallace,' he was told breezily by a sub. 'That's what we in the profession call a self-correcting error.'
There was a time when I might have taken a similarly cavalier attitude. But with age, I become much less tolerant of mis- takes in print. I seldom go through an issue of any quality paper today without finding something manifestly wrong. There is less excuse too, than before the Wapping Re- volution, since journalists usually key in and correct their own copy and can no longer fairly blame compositors and idle printer's readers. It is about time all editors had a ferocious drive for increased accura- cy of all kinds. But who am Ito talk? I like to think of myself as a fanatic for factual accuracy, but a legion of errors are in print to reproach me. Moreover, despite all my efforts, I remain a poor speller, a charac- teristic I inherit from my father. My mother, by contrast, never made a spelling mistake in her life, and happily I am married to someone similarly gifted, who goes through everything I write and saves me from much shame. What worry me most are proper names. I suffered night- mares when writing my History of the Jews, not least because so many modern Jews have surnames of Polish origin, notoriously the most difficult of all to spell. Despite endless checking by many experts, some mistakes survived and I continue to receive reproachful letters from far-flung shores.
Inaccuracy is endemic throughout the British media. Does the answer lie in more checking systems? This is the solution put forward by John Birt, the BBC's Deputy Director-General. But my experience teaches: put not your faith in researchers. American magazines employ them in large numbers and, when you write for one, they are liable to send you telexes with 50 or more queries, most of them unhelpful. ('What is your evidence the Queen prefers tea made from Malvern Water?') Moreov- er, they sometimes insert errors as well as remove them. Once, in a piece for Time magazine, which has a battalion of female researchers, I told the famous tale of Dr Johnson's old friend who tried to be a philosopher 'but cheerfulness was always breaking in'. I described him as 'from Dr Johnson's old college, Pembroke' — then added, as I was writing for Americans, 'Oxford'. In due course this was researched and 'checked' and, in print, changed to 'Cambridge'. Here was a case where I would willingly have kicked the young lady responsible downstairs, and hurled a light- ed kerosene lamp after her.
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