MBP of the Week: Washington Post

I may develop carpal tunnel syndrome tipping my hat to Craig Silverman (my Canadian soul brother). On his Regret the Error blog today, he highlighted the following correction from yesterday’s Washington Post:

“A photograph in the April 20 Sports section purporting to show Louisiana State University quarterback JaMarcus Russell instead showed teammate Craig Davis.”

That’s JaMarcus Russell pictured above. To get a look at Craig Davis, click here.

Thanks again, Craig Silverman. I couldn’t do this without you.

Let me remind my readers that it occasionally happens to white folks too. (Occasionally.) Here’s a correction that ran in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last Friday:

“REO Speedwagon was pictured in the photo on Page 2 of Thursday’s Get Out section. The caption misidentified the group as Styx.”

UPDATE (04/26/07): Don’t know what it is about the Louisiana State University football team. But Craig Silverman cites another LSU-related Misidentified Black Person this week.

The following correction is from yesterday’s Chicago Tribune:

“The identity of an LSU football player was incorrect in a photo caption on the back page of Tuesday’s Sports section. The player shown was not LaRon Landry but teammate Dwayne Bowe.”

The Chicago Tribune sports section is the worst serial offender I’ve encountered since I began cataloging MBPs.

Matter of fact, Tuesday’s fuck-up comes one month after Tribune sports editor Dan McGrath told journalism blogger Richard Prince: “Our department is taking a hard and probably overdue look at our process for identifying photos in the hope of making it more reliable and eliminating such errors in the future.”

In the hope of making it more reliable…?

Yeah, okay. Keep hope alive, Mr. McGrath.

Meanwhile, I’ll remind everybody of this MBP classic, as corrected by the Chicago Tribune in early 2006:

“On the back page of Thursday’s Sports section, a photo of Serena Williams with members of the group Destiny’s Child was misidentified as Beyonce Knowles.”

Oh, and speaking of tennis… there’s this correction the South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s website:

“A caption for a photograph on Page 1C of Monday’s Sports section incorrectly identified Lori McNeil, a coach for the U.S. Fed Cup tennis team.”

Gee, I wonder who they said she was? (My guess is Zina Garrison.) I got any readers in the Broward or South Palm Beach area who can lay hands on an April 23 Sun-Sentinel and see?

UPDATE (05/02/07): I was right! Am I good, or am I good?

I went to the trouble of purchasing a back issue of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, because its correction didn’t provide full disclosure on the misidentification of tennis coach Lori McNeil.

Sure enough, the photo caption on April 23 said “Zina Garrison.”