The Guardian may have been a little too enthusiastic when it went after the Daily Beast in October and November and issued a long correction to set the record straight.

From the Guardian

• In two articles, 8 October and 15 November, examining the merger of the US-based website The Daily Beast with Newsweek, there were a series of errors and basic failings of journalistic practice. We incorrectly said that the Daily Beast’s audience was “tiny”. The site’s figures for unique users as measured by the Nielsen research organisation in August show that it had 1.656 million unique users; according to figures supplied by the Daily Beast citing another research firm, comScore, unique users in October were 2.9 million. It was also implied that Tatler was a Condé Nast title during Tina Brown’s editorship – it was not. Only towards the end of her time as editor was the magazine acquired by Condé Nast. We also gave Brown’s age as 57 when at the time the articles were published she was 56. In addition, both articles relied heavily on anonymous quotes and there was no formal attempt to approach the Daily Beast for a response to assertions in the articles. This is in breach of the Guardian’s editorial code, which states that anonymous quotes may assist the reader but “if used lazily or indiscriminately … become a menace”. There may be exceptional circumstances when anonymous pejorative quotes may be used, but they will be rare – and only after consultation with the senior editor of the day. The Daily Beast also asks us to point out that contrary to our assertion that the website has “no apparent business plan”, there is such a plan and the site has secured 66 new advertising campaigns since the beginning of 2010 (Tina Brown bids for newsweek – and heads for showdown with arch-rival Huffington, 8 October, page 26, and Does Newsweek deal give Queen of Buzz a final sting? 15 November, page 6, Media Guardian).

This is illustrative of the media’s mindset to be fast rather than right and what happens when you ignore editorial standards.  It is also a lesson to journalists that when they go after Tina Brown their story needs to be bulletproof or else.

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