I think that by far, one of the worst mistakes I found was one that occurred during the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting coverage. Poynter.org writes how several news organizations began running the Facebook photo of the shooter, named Ryan Lanza; however, the photos weren't of the correct Lanza. Errors like these not only destroy the lives of the falsely accused, but also tarnish the reputation of the reporting news sources. One source, Mediaite, published the photo with the headline "Is this Connecticut school shooter Ryan Lanza's Facebook?" and then upon realizing their mistake, changed the headline to "Apparently, this is NOT Connecticut school shooter Ryan Lanza's Facebook." Many other sources followed suit and edited their headlines, while others ran corrections at the end of their online stories with an apology.
In general, most of the other corrections I've seen have been pretty simple: names misspelled, incorrect ages, and the Boston Globe misprinted winning lottery numbers. While these all seem pretty trivial, and nothing compared to the Ryan Lanza debacle, errors still add up. No matter how little the error is, if your news organization continually makes them, it all adds up to lost credibility. Readers depend on the news for accuracy and quality, and any error-- no matter how small-- affects that dependability.
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