Everyone makes mistakes, journalists included. Trust me: reporters wake up in the middle of the night cringing over errors they made years ago.
But this week has seen some doozies.
A summer reading list that was part of a syndicated insert in the once-storied Chicago Sun-Times newspaper and elsewhere promoted a bunch of books that didn’t exist, even if their purported authors were real. Nightshade Market by Min Jin Lee? The Rainmakers by Percival Everett? Nope. When readers noticed, the freelancer who had been hired by a third party to write the guide admitted that he had used AI.
In a statement, the Sun-Times confessed that the work had not been reviewed by their editors and had been presented to readers without acknowledging that it came from a third party. “This should be a learning moment for all journalism organizations,” it said. “Our work is valued – and valuable – because of the humanity behind it."
The blunder drew headlines and many red faces, and probably ruined at least one person’s career – not to mention that it prevented real books that authors have actually laboured over from being promoted.
The debacle serves as a warning of the dangers of relying on AI to do your work. But it was also an illustration of the current hollowed-out media landscape.
There was a much more serious error reported by multiple media outlets around the world this week – one that has not only failed to be prominently corrected but has been repeated again and again even after the clarification was made.
When I first heard a report on the CBC about the famine in Gaza being projected to kill 14,000 babies in 48 hours if aid did not reach them, I thought it seemed off. As terrible as things are, this was an enormous number with strangely specific imminent stakes.
When I went looking, it appeared to check out: the number came from a United Nations official, speaking to the BBC. It was widely reported and cited in political discussions.
But at any point, did any of the journalists who repeated that number have a moment like I did and think: hmmm, that doesn’t make sense?
Because it didn’t.
As it turns out, the UN official was wrong. He was quoting from a report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) that warned of 14,100 severe cases of acute malnutrition in young children in Gaza between April, 2025 and March, 2026.
This is still awful, terrible, catastrophic. But it’s not 14,000 dead children in two days.
Even once the error became clear, it was still being quoted – for instance, by CBC Radio’s flagship news program, The Current. I know this because I was listening to an interview on Wednesday where the statistics were cited while I was reading a news story about them being incorrect.
Throughout the day, I saw social media posts parroting this alarming figure, which had since been clarified by a spokesperson from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Here’s what also happened on Wednesday: two staff members of Washington’s Israeli embassy were gunned down outside a Jewish museum there. Afterward, the shooter, according to police, yelled “Free, free Palestine.”
The victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were about to be engaged. Mr. Lischinsky‘s last activity on X was sharing an Israeli official’s criticism of what he (and many others) have called the “blood libel” of the erroneous 48-hours statistic.
To be absolutely clear, there is no evidence of any connection between the inaccurate reporting around this figure and this horrible crime. But it should remind us that, especially in this charged environment, when the media gets both the message and the facts wrong, it can be more than just embarrassing - there can be real-world consequences.
Journalists are under attack. Did you hear Donald Trump berate a reporter that same day in Washington? NBC‘s Peter Alexander had asked about the gift of a decked-out private 747 from Qatar, which has raised obvious ethical and security concerns. You know what they say: there’s no such thing as a free jet.
How did Mr. Trump respond to the absolutely fair question? “You’re a terrible reporter. Number one, you don’t have what it takes to be a reporter; you’re not smart enough.” Mr. Trump called him a jerk, a disgrace. He yelled “quiet!” repeatedly. “No more questions from you.” He also went off on ABC and CBS.
These reporters are brave – not for asking pointed questions to a belligerent man-baby who debates by insult and yelling “fake news,” but for continuing to do their jobs with integrity in a high-pressure climate now dripping with authoritarian chill and inflamed by the irresponsible rhetoric of the world‘s most powerful person.
We must do our best – to prove the media-haters wrong and get it right.