When demons take the blame for a journalist’s typographical errors
Kenyan lawyer Paul Gicheru when he made his first appearance before the ICC on November 6, 2020, before Judge Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou.
What you need to know:
- The story that fell through the cracks and left many readers disappointed was, however, published online.
- It was also printed the following day but with a slightly different headline.
One reader said it was sabotage. The story of lawyer Paul Gicheru on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) was promoted on the front page of the Daily Nation.
Pictures of Mr Gicheru and slain witness Meshack Yebei were placed above the teaser headline: “ICC seeks witness as new details on Yebei role emerge.” The reader was directed to page 12. However, on page 12 was a story about potatoes and another on the banning of trade in scrap metal and nothing about the story that is said to be sucking in Deputy President William Ruto.
It was a busy day of fending off queries from frustrated readers. Another one asked: Where were the editors when the story vanished? Yet another said he has been a loyal Nation customer for more than 20 years “but today I am disappointed. I feel cheated.”
The story that fell through the cracks and left many readers disappointed was, however, published online that day, bylined Joseph Wangui. The editor’s apology was appended: “This story was to appear in the Friday edition of the Daily Nation but did not due to a technical hitch. We apologise for the mix-up.”
It was also printed the following day but with a slightly different headline: “The ICC goes for ‘hostile’ witness before case on Gicheru begins” (Saturday Nation, January 22, 2022, page 8). It was also more than twice as long as the one that stalled and was authored by John Kamau and not Joseph Wangui. The editor’s “technical hitch” apology was repeated.
Printer’s devil
The dictionary meaning of “technical hitch” is a problem involving the way a machine or system works. But in this case, the term could also be a euphemism for human failure blamed on machines.
In the old days, such technical hitches — errors in newspapers — were blamed on an evil and malicious spirit known as the “printer’s devil”. Those were the days when newspapers were printed using letterpress and stories set using mechanical movable type. Mistakes were easy to make. Journalists needed someone to blame. So the legend of a printer’s devil prowling the print shop was born.
Like the night runners of Homa Bay, the printer’s devil moved at night after journalists had gone home to sleep. And when the printer was not looking, it would change letters, introduce typos, drop some lines of text and at times whole stories.
I wrote about this long-running mythology some eight years ago (“Blaming evil spirits for typing errors,” Daily Nation, August 8, 2014). I noted how it afflicted not only journalists but also writers. Nothing much has changed since.
The printer’s devil is a manifestation of scapegoating. According to Encyclopedia of Social Psychology, scapegoating “serves as an opportunity to explain failure or misdeeds while maintaining one’s positive self-image”.
Embarrassing errors
When President Uhuru Kenyatta was the guest of honour at Ghana’s 59th Independence Day celebrations on March 6, 2016, the brochure for the event was full of embarrassing errors — including spelling mistakes and wrong facts. It described him as the “President of the Republic of Ghana.” After the celebrations, then-Ghana President John Mahama, in a television interview, blamed the mistakes on the printer’s devil.
It’s common in Ghana to blame the printer’s devil for mistakes journalists make. K.O.O. Armah has published a paper, “The Printer’s Devil and English Language Infractions in the Ghanaian Print Media”, in the Journal of Science and Technology (2008/09 Vol. 28, Issue 2). He concludes: “Pushing the blame persistently on the hapless printer’s devil only betrays the journalist as either incompetent or simply incorrigible.”
Despite the new technology of producing newspapers using computers and off-set printing, the printer’s devil has refused to die. I know it at least hides in my computer spellchecker. When typing this article, it tried to trick me to change the name of Paul Gicheru to “Paul Rich”, Meshack Yebei to “Meshack Yemeni” and William Ruto to “William Roto”.
But if we, as journalists, need the printer’s devils as a scapegoat for our sins, we must also remember to copy our Christian brethren, and shout several times a day “Shetani ashindwe (Let the devil be defeated)!”
The Public Editor is an independent news ombudsman who handles readers’ complaints on editorial matters including accuracy and journalistic standards. Email: [email protected]. Call or text 0721989264.
