Only kidding

Friday's Argus featured a Your Interview with Richard Robinson.

We would like to clarify that the quote "I have become increasingly convinced that we are heading for a disastrous confrontation and that the 21st century will be remembered for a terrible war between mankind and goats" was a reader question and not a response from Mr Robinson.

The next paragraph: "People often underestimate how dangerous a goat can be - I personally know six people who have become severely injured by goats and the annual death toll racked up by goats is over 2,000,000", is also a reader question and not a response from Mr Robinson.

The Argus is happy to correct this and would apologise for the error.

That has to be my personal favourite from Poynter's selection of the best media errors and corrections of 2014. 

I was also grateful to Poynter's for reassuring me that reports of the death of satire have been greatly exaggerated, with this wonderfully tongue-in-cheek non-apology from the Pan- Arabia Enquirer to all those lovely, lovely people at Bell Pottinger turd-polishers public relations:

Yesterday we received a complaint about one of our articles and subsequently removed it from the Pan-Arabia Enquirer website. Following on from this, we would like to offer our apologies to PR firm Bell Pottinger for a satirical story that suggested that it had won the account to representing the Islamic State. Although the article was entirely in jest, we feel we must apologise for any sullying of the name of a company whose standing in the international community is reflected in a client list that has included the likes of Augusto Pinochet and the government of Bahrain. Oh, and the government of Sri Lanka. And Rolf Harris.

That's got an economical poetic justice to it, reminiscent of the climactic scene from that old courtroom drama QBVII, where (spoiler alert) a respected doctor, who's been suing for defamation, but turns out to have spent his war performing Josef Mengele-style operations on prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, is awarded one derisory half-penny for damage to his "good name." Excellent stuff.

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