What, them issue corrections: The New York Times is a real piece of work. Here’s why:
Yesterday, Paul Krugman made a very rare mistake in his column. The error didn’t contradict the basic thrust of the column, but it was a large mistake, and it came early on in the piece:
KRUGMAN (8/5/13): Consider what went down in Congress last week.In fact, House leaders announced plans to cut spending on food stamps by five percent. Krugman’s claim was way, way off. It was a very large error.
First, House leaders had to cancel planned voting on a transportation bill, because not enough representatives were willing to vote for the bill’s steep spending cuts. Now, just a few months ago House Republicans approved an extreme austerity budget, mandating severe overall cuts in federal spending — and each specific bill will have to involve large cuts in order to meet that target. But it turned out that a significant number of representatives, while willing to vote for huge spending cuts as long as there weren’t any specifics, balked at the details. Don’t cut you, don’t cut me, cut that fellow behind the tree.
Then House leaders announced plans to hold a vote cutting spending on food stamps in half—a demand that is likely to sink the already struggling effort to agree with the Senate on a farm bill.
Yesterday morning, Krugman corrected his error in this blog post, obscuring the size of the error a bit. But here we are, 36 hours later, and his column remains uncorrected on-line.
No correction has been posted on-line. No correction has been posted on Nexis.
“House leaders announced plans to hold a vote cutting spending on food stamps in half?” That statement is egregiously wrong. But at the Times, they simply don’t care. They’ll get around to correcting the error when they damn well please!
We saw this same who-gives-a-shittism in the Times’ early, egregious misreporting about the killing of Trayvon Martin. In its first report on the topic, the Times made a truly egregious error.
Reporter Lizette Alvarez stated that two shots had been fired that night, then constructed a heinous tale about what else must have happened. In fact, only one shot had been fired that night. The report was egregiously wrong.
That was a truly heinous mistake, one of the worst we’ve ever seen. But to this day, it stands uncorrected! If you review past coverage in the Times, you may still come away with the idea that two shots were fired that night.
Alvarez made a second major error that day. The Times took about three weeks to post a correction for that, although the error, which others had made, came to light within two days.
The Times is awful in so many ways it’s hard to keep track. It’s easy to correct a mistake like the (very rare) error Krugman made.
In this, as in so many things, the New York Times just doesn’t care.
I noticed just this as did Dean Baker, and I am grateful for your explanation and feel Krugman hid the size of the mistake and besides where is the correction? Krugman ignored Baker's correction. I am disappointed in Krugman in this instance.
ReplyDeleteThe Times' correction procedure for their op-eds came up a number of years ago. As I recall, opinion pieces are not fact checked by the Times' vaunted fact-checking team. The Public Editor is barred from addressing the opinion pages in any way. And, the editor who publishes the corrections cannot run corrections of opinion items. The correction, if any, is at the discretion of the author of the item.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost as if the Times wants the freedom to have publish falsehoods on their opinion pages.
This is sheer malicious nonsense.
DeletePoo Poo Platter (No Corrections Included)
ReplyDelete"here we are, 36 hours later, and his column remains uncorrected on-line.
No correction has been posted on-line. No correction has been posted on Nexis." Bob Somerby, This post.
"Reporter Lizette Alvarez stated that two shots had been fired that night, then constructed a heinous tale about what else must have happened. In fact, only one shot had been fired that night. The report was egregiously wrong.
That was a truly heinous mistake, one of the worst we’ve ever seen. But to this day, it stands uncorrected! If you review past coverage in the Times, you may still come away with the idea that two shots were fired that night." Bob Somerby, This post.
Our analysts were divided on whether to follow with the quote of Bob praising Alvarez's work as fair and balanced, but that seemed too professorial and snarky.
An argument then ensued about including Somerby's statement of fact that Alvarez wrote in that "heinous tale" that she had not listened to the 911 tape. Later he wrote that might, in fact, not be factual. One analyst held out for this one because Bob has yet to clarify or correct the original post. If she had listened to the tape it would destroy Bob's argument that she got all her inromation from Martin family lawyers
But this post is about the NYT and its who-gives-a shittism. So we decided to go with Bob's July 25th praise of Mike Schneider of the AP, whose work Bob cited for its accuracy in order to contrast it with the heinous work of Alvarez, upon whom he was bestowing high Howler praise earlier in the same month.
"Indeed, in this second news report, the AP seemed to be subtly rebutting the claim that two shots could be heard on the tape. “All of the callers described a single shot,” Schneider explicitly reported, early in his report.
Schneider was right about that. But so what? Despite that fact, the New York Times was inaccurately telling its readers that two shots could be head on the tape.
This false report, and the lurid story it fueled, produced a wave of anger across the country, the Orlando Sentinel later reported." Bob Somerby, July 25, 2013
Commenters to that very post quickly noted that not all the callers described a single shot. One caller described hearing as many as three. In the most famous call, the one with the screams for help, the caller refers to plural gunshots, then a single shot, and the person in the room with her calls out about plural gunshots. Both Schneider and Somerby were wrong. That IS a fact. You can listen to the tapes yourself.
How many hours have passed since his commenters corrected his first error? Where has Somerby's correction been posted? Do these errors by Somerby change the thrust of his posts? Does anyone give a shit?
While you are doing your math on the hours question, see if you can spot the second error. There have been reports of a second error. Has Bob acknowledged them? Or has he, like so many liberals in the case of "infamous" reports of Trayvon revenge beating, just ignored it. We may address this next week in "The Shit in Who Gives and Who Don't Give a Shit still smells like
shit."
This is malicious rubbish.
Delete"Do these errors by Somerby change the thrust of his posts?"
DeleteNo.
Anon. @ 6:57
DeleteYou, of course, are free to state the opinion that Bob's errors don't change the thrust of his posts. I disagree.
But look at the howling from the head HOWLER
in this little post about Krugman and the times not making sufficient corrections for an error which Somerby himself said did not change the basic thrust of Krugman's column.
PPP
Note the absurdity of Bob's obsession over those saying like "Zimmerman should have stayed in his car" when variations on those words appear all over the Z interviews.
ReplyDeleteAnd note the absurdity of Bob's refusal to address the police comments that Zimmerman provoked TM to defend himself by his stalking-like behavior and scaring TM, by refusing to identify himself, by refusing to state his purpose when asked, and by Z's admitted grabbing for what TM would have perceived as a weapon.
Since it seems you didn't hear, all that bulshit of your either A) when introduced, went over like a lead balloon at trial, or B) the prosecution, realizing the irrelevance and danger of open doors they preferred closed refused to introduce such nonsense at all.
DeleteIn any event, to the extent the trial represented a contest between LW's and Somerby's way of seeing things, yours was crushed, and his was validated.
News flash over.
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