Check facts please

IN Media Watch Briefs | 27/07/2013

Whatever has happened to basic fact checking? TOI report on Arun Nehru's cremation quotes agency reports as saying that his pyre was lit by Sonia Gandhi's grandson Rehan as Nehru is survived by a wife and two daughters. Just before that I had read Indian Express which said his grandson Ankit lit the pyre. And just two pages before the TOI report is an ad put out by the family, which shows Nehru had three grandsons. Ok, so subs/reporters don't check obit ads, but didn't it strike anyone why a second or third cousin's grandson should perform the last rites? Does quoting agency reports absolve a newspaper's journalists of factual inaccuracy?