Last week the hardworking staff at Campaign Outsider reluctantly recorded this error in the Boston Globe:
Roger Williams University School of Law’s David A. Logan had an op-ed piece in Saturday’s Boston Globe about the “crazy-quilt of law” around reporter’s privilege – that is, the legal rights of journalists to protect confidential sources.
Recalling the rumpus when first-Robert-Novak-and-then-others outed CIA operative Valerie Plame (really, do you need links to all that?), Logan writes :
The jailing of Judith Miller from The New York Times and Matthew Cooper from Time underscores the risk of contempt citations and even incarceration that face reporters who rely upon confidential sources in the present legal and political environment.
Problem is, Matthew Cooper never went to jail.
(Miller, on the other hand, did 85 days in the sneezer, although not exactly “standing on her head” the way tough guys used to describe their stretches in stir.)
At post time, no correction had been appended to Logan’s Globe op-ed.
Spurred on by one of Campaign Outsider’s splendid readers, the hardworking staff sent a correction to the Globe, which was forwarded to editorial page editor Peter Cannelos.
Forwarded by Mary F Rourke/Editorial/GLOBE on 09/28/2009 12:57 PM
—–
carroll7@bu.edu
To: comments@globe.com
09/28/2009 01:52 cc:
AM Subject: Correction
Greetings!
Sorry to tell you that David Logan’s Saturday 9/26 op-ed column on
reporters’ privilege contained an error:
Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper never went to jail.
Regards,
John Carroll
Alas, no correction has been forthcoming.
Discuss among yourselves.
Campaign Outsider 
The Globe made an error? Gasp ! ! !
I’m not surprised by the Globe’s inaction. My experience is that they don’t run a correction even in cases that are blatant factual errors in news stories — such as stating the wrong number of Boston City Councilors-At-Large in large font on the front page.
As you know, if it is a regular columnist on the op-ed pages, the newspaper will try to run the correction as an addendum/erratum at the bottom of a future column by the same author. But obviously not the case here with Logan, since this author’s op-ed seems to be a one-off.
Globe has become sloppy, which is not surprising, given that copy editors must have been among those who took buyouts. Today’s Globe article about the attorney who wrote about Barney Frank referred to the author as “council,” instead of “counsel.”