Last Updated on July 26, 2015
When millionaire Robert Durst was taken into custody earlier this week, the Associated Press included one little detail that was blatantly incorrect.
You have to give them credit: when the Associated Press makes an error, they make it very clear they goofed in the first place. The headline to the revision begins with the word Correction in all caps with whatever the correction actually is following it.
It’s hard to miss a revision like that.
That’s exactly the kind of revision the organization was forced to make earlier this week in reporting the arrest of millionaire Robert Durst on murder charges.
An Associated Press “NewsMinute” reporting the arrest included a line that surprised some, but amused others:
Trooper Melissa Matey told the Associated Press that an arrest warrant was issued for the former Limp Bizkit frontman and he was rebooked in the Orleans Parish Jail on Monday under two new charges.
The way the line was written, it’s not clear whether Trooper Matey said he was a former Limp Bizkit frontman or an AP staffer, thinking he was once part of the band, just threw that fact in there to help people recognize the name.
Fortunately for the AP, the error only went out in one News Minute  to California broadcast subscribers versus going nationwide or worldwide. Unfortunately for the AP (and anyone else in that situation), even one is too many, and still obviously required a correction:
In the second item of the California 10th NewsMinute sent March 16 to users of the state broadcast wire, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Robert Durst is a member of a band. He is a real estate heir; Fred Durst is the former frontman of Limp Bizkit.
Though I might remember a Limp Bizkit song or two if I took the time to Google the band, off the top of my head, I can’t think of one single song of theirs I’m familiar with. For that reason alone, I’m sure I’d have never thrown in a suggestion he was a member of the band without double-checking that.
I would like to believe that had I received that information from police, I would have at least thought to myself, I don’t remember hearing anyone say he was in a band before. He certainly doesn’t look like a band member, present or former, to me, but what do I know?
I’d like to think that I would have opened up another tab in my trusty web browser and Googled Limp Bizkit. And I’d like to believe, as fervently as possible, that when I had seen the drummer’s name, Fred Durst, I would, at the very least, have dropped that detail from the story I was about to publish until I could triple-check that little detail.
The fact is that detail wasn’t really important to the story, anyway. It might have been nice background information if it had turned out to be correct, but it certainly wasn’t critical background information. Had he been part of a band, that fact would have been dwarfed by his current legal situation in any case.
I can understand how a mistake like that can be made in the race to get the information out there. The news audience wants to know everything right this second, not twenty minutes from now; though they say they’d rather have the information “right” than “first,”  as soon as something they think is newsworthy happens, they immediately begin sending messages, particularly over social media, about why that something isn’t being reported.
It’s a critical balance for journalists to master, to make sure we’re getting the information out as quickly as we can, but never at the compromising of facts.
