We journalists cannot avoid making mistakes. It has always been the case and it always will be. Nowadays they tend to be pointed out quickly and, of course, can be corrected just as quickly.
They can be embarrassing all the same. Spare a thought for the Huffington Post travel writer who wrote of the "30 epic places you absolutely must visit before you're 30."
At No 13 - truly unlucky for the writer - was Bernauer Strasse in Berlin, site of one of the preserved sections of the Berlin wall built in 1961 by the East German government. But that's not what was originally written because the piece carries this tag:
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story indicated that the Berlin Wall was built by Nazi Germany. In fact, it was built by the Communists during the Cold War. Ouch!
The most common mistakes of all are typos (my own continual problem). Occasionally, the resulting literals are truly "beautiful", as a friend noted last night in sending me this example from a live BBC blog during the match between Wales and Belgium:
Cute indeed.
