Call me a cynic, but I don't think the purpose of publishing corrections is to inform the public of specific things wrong in a piece of newspaper coverage. Rather, it is to publich just enough that there is the illusion of post reporting fact checking. That way as readers go over their paper they see a scattering of corrections, which eases their mind over the factual accounts in the rest of the day's news. To best accomplish this, the corrections should be (and are) generally minor technical corrections to major bur rather boring stories (E.g., "In last Friday's paper we incorrectly reported that the growth in M2 in the third quarter of 2006 was 1.5 percent. The actual growth was 1.8 percent."_

Corrections to factual errors are always nice, but I worry more about the habit of news outlets presenting quotes from "experts" without making much effort to find out if the person they interview is really an expert at anything. Ever hear of a "think tank" called the Council on Economic Trends? It's a mail drop that author and general pain Jeremy Rifkin uses to give factitious weight to his rants about everything.

Or a reporter will interview a doctor on the subject of a new technique in brain surgery. Does not seem to be too important if the doctor interviewed is actually a proctologist.

It's the half truths and twisting of the facts that I don't cotton to.