Among the highlights of this week's edition of Oops, Gelf's quasi-weekly round-up of media corrections: The press jumped the gun on Palestinian elections; a plagiarist and a fabulist; and college media problems. Here's one of our favorite corrections this week:

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New York Times, January 21: An article on Wednesday about infidelity exposed by a chatty parrot described the way the parrot, owned by a man living with his girlfriend in Leeds, England, kept screeching the name of the woman's secret lover. When the parrot said "I love you, Gary," in what sounded like the woman's voice, her boyfriend (whose name is not Gary) broke up with her. Although the article reported that the information had been obtained from reports in The Daily Telegraph and other British newspapers, The Times could not verify the former couple's accounts because the information was given to the British press by a freelance journalist who charged for the account. The Times does not pay for information. The Times should have disclosed fully to readers why we relied on other news reports. Or, perhaps it would have been prudent, given that condition, for The Times to have resisted parroting the episode at all.
The report also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, the Times of London, and elsewhere. Museum of Hoaxes notes that the New York Daily News also had trouble confirming Gary's words, and declares the episode a likely hoax.