Photo slip-up shows need for vigilance

Benjamin Butterfield woke up Wednesday to a flurry of interest in his health, all because of an error on the front page of the Times Colonist.

Benjamin Butterfield’s photograph was used to illustrate a headline on the death of local developer David Butterfield. We have an extensive database of photos here; when one of our staff members searched for David, the wrong Butterfield image was pulled out.

The error made it into print. It was not caught by the people here who check pages before publication, but it was certainly noticed by several sharp-eyed readers who started calling and emailing a minute or so after the newspapers arrived at their doors.

A photograph of David Butterfield appeared in our business pages. That photo was correct, and it quite clearly did not show the same person as the photograph on front page.

Benjamin Butterfield is, to be clear, not a developer. He is a noted tenor and an associate professor at the school of music at the University of Victoria, where he is head of voice and co-head of performance.

To the best of his knowledge, he is not related to David Butterfield. When I spoke with him on Wednesday, he noted that the two men were both prominent enough in Victoria that their photos would be in our database, which made it possible for the mistake to be made.

He was also, fortunately, in good humour over the Times Colonist error.

“People have been saying that this is fake news, but I have said no, it’s alternative facts,” he said. That’s because it was true that someone had died; we just identified, through the photograph, the wrong person.

He also said that he felt he looked good for 69 — that’s David Butterfield’s age; Benjamin is 52 — and was delighted to learn that so many people cared about his health and well-being.

And before the call ended, I got a better sense of Benjamin Butterfield, and I was impressed. When I apologized for our mistake, he said he was more concerned about the people here who had committed the error, because they would surely be having a tough day because of it.

He is right about that. This is the sort of mistake that causes sleepless nights for reporters and editors. All it takes is one misstep, one click on the wrong photograph or one assumption that is not based in fact.

The strongest asset we have at the Times Colonist is our credibility. People need to be able to trust what they read. Mistakes happen in every news organization — and in every business or government office, for that matter — but readers need to know that when we make a mistake, we will correct it as soon as we can.

That is why we consistently run corrections on page A2. We don’t hide them, because it is absolutely vital to be accurate in what we do.

It would be far better, of course, to head off the mistakes before they make it into print.

Avoiding errors is especially important in this era of fake news — agenda- or profit-driven stories that are intentionally misleading and are posted online in an effort to deceive the public.

On Tuesday, for example, a couple of dubious websites reported that actor Clint Eastwood had died. Many people shared that sad, but untrue, news on social media. The lie about Eastwood’s death was even spread by friends of mine who should have known better. If they can be duped, anybody can be duped.

Everyone wants to be first with the news, it seems. I understand that thinking, of course, given the profession I chose.

But in legitimate news organizations, there are checks and balances. We don’t rush to print with a story about a person’s death without verifying it. The last thing we want to do is report that someone has died when they are, in fact, still alive.

We heard talk of David Butterfield’s death on Monday, but we could not verify it, so we held the story a day. It’s sad that the extra time did not help us serve you — not when the wrong photograph caused misinformation to be spread.

In the end, we offer sincere apologies to David’s wife, Norma Butterfield, Benjamin Butterfield and their families.