Mediaite Headline had Wrong Name for Alleged Oregon Mall Shooter

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(Credit: Mediaite, screenshot)

The headline for a Mediaite story about a shooting-suicide in a Portland, Oregon shopping mall last week contained a glaring error — the suspected shooter’s name was wrong.

The original headline gave the wrong name for the accused shooter, Jacob Tyler Roberts.  Mediaite’s original headline named him James Tyler Roberts, even though the first sentence of its story identified the man accused of killing two and then himself correctly as Jacob Tyler Roberts.

Sometime by the morning of Dec. 12, Mediaite fixed the headline, but didn’t post a correction. iMediaEthics wrote to Mediaite about their error and asked if they planned on posting a correction but never heard back. Shortly after sending our email, we noticed an “Editor’s note” disclosing that “this post has been edited since its original posting — (Corrected Shooters Name).”

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Mediaite Headline had Wrong Name for Accused Oregon Mall Shooter

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