It isn't often one sees a newspaper publish a correction on the front page above the fold, complete with a color photo of the person who was wronged. For the answer check out a March 3 Sun-Sentinel piece by reporters John Holland and Ardy Friedberg . Then eyeball the list of its shortcomings, which ran March 10. Note the lack of a byline on the correction, the use of the word unsubstantiated to describe the original story, and the eight-bullet sidebar detailing what Holland and Friedberg got wrong. It's the journalistic equivalent of being taken out behind the woodshed.
Undercurrents can only imagine the squeals when the paddle came down.
Holland and Friedberg were playing catch-up on a hot little story concerning murder cases investigated by the Broward Sheriff's Office and prosecuted by Broward State Attorney Michael Satz . On March 2 The Herald had reported that famed O.J. attorney Barry Scheck wanted a look into how murder cases have been handled here. Scheck cited the case of Frank Lee Smith, who died of cancer early last year while serving time on death row for the rape and murder of a Fort Lauderdale girl named Shandra Whitehead. In December a DNA test exonerated Smith posthumously. The Sun-Sentinel reporters, possibly desperate to advance the story, went very wrong.