Wausau Daily Herald Article (Still) Contains Factual Error - Nearly 18 Months After Publication
The factual error still remains - notwithstanding the periodical's stated goal "to promptly correct errors" contained in its published articles.
More than a year ago, Wisconsin Jurisprudence reported on a factual error contained in a two-month-old Wausau Daily Herald article
According to the Wausau Daily Herald article, the “United States Seventh District Circuit Court” initially dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by Thomas Batterman, a local financial advisor with a checkered professional history, against the Wausau Daily Herald.
However, Wisconsin Jurisprudence explained how this description was factually inaccurate, noting that “[n]o such court exists—or has ever existed—in the United States.”
Prior to reporting on the Wausua Daily Herald’s factual inaccuracy, I reached out to Karen Madden, a rapid response reporter at Gannett who wrote the article for the Wausau Daily Herald, to let her know about the mistake—in the hopes that she would quickly update her article with a correction.
In response to my email, Madden contended that her description of the federal trial court was “technically correct,” but that if she had to do “it over again, [she] would have used Western District of Wisconsin.”
After the Wausau Daily Herald failed to issue a timely correction to its article, Wisconsin Jurisprudence reported on the Wausau Daily Herald’s failure to correct the factual inaccuracy contained in its two-month-old article.
“One can only hope that it doesn’t take two more months—or an even longer period of time—for the Wausau Daily Herald to easily update its article with a correction,” I wrote at the time.
Undettered by the Wausau Daily Herald’s failure to issue a timely correction to its article, shortly after Wisconsin Jurisprudence published its report, I wrote an email to the Wausau Daily Herald—more speficially, to the email address that the Wausau Daily Herald asks its readers to use to report errors contained in its published articles—about the uncorrected factual error.
However, the Wausau Daily Herald did not respond to my email. Instead, nearly 18 months after the Wausau Daily Herald first published its factually inaccurate article—and more than a year after I most recently pointed out the factual inaccuracy to the Wausau Daily Herald—the factual error still remains uncorrected.
According to its website, the Wausau Daily Herald has a stated goal “to promptly correct errors” contained in its published articles. Unfortunately, to the detriment of its readers, it appears that the Wausau Daily Herald has difficulty implementing that policy in practice.