Patterico's Pontifications

7/22/2005

L.A. Times Corrects Record on Roberts — But with an Important Omission

Filed under: Dog Trainer,Judiciary — Patterico @ 5:55 am



The L.A. Times has a correction this morning to an error I noted yesterday:

Supreme Court nominee — An article in Wednesday’s Section A profiling Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. said he was a member of the Federalist Society. Roberts has given speeches to the conservative group, but does not recall having been a member, a White House spokeswoman said.

However, The Times has not corrected its editorial, which made the ridiculous statement that Roberts was “a fixture in the Federalist Society.” Why is a separate correction necessary when the factual mistake was the same? There are two reasons:

First, part of the point of a correction is to acknowledge error. Today’s correction does not acknowledge the error in the editorial, which was sillier than the mistake in the news story because of the editorial’s hyperbolic phrasing.

Second, while The Times runs corrections of news stories on Page A2, where nobody sees them, the paper’s policy is to correct editorials on the editorial page. Running a correction in the same space where the error first appeared maximizes the chance that the correction will be seen by those who read the original erroneous assertion.

I have a note in to the Readers’ Rep to see if a separate correction will run regarding the error in the editorial. I rather doubt it; my guess is that I’ll be told that today’s correction covers the waterfront — despite the reasons I just gave you that it doesn’t.

13 Responses to “L.A. Times Corrects Record on Roberts — But with an Important Omission”

  1. Here is a first hand account – report about “Mickey Kaus (Fausfiles) Interviews Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette)” [link removed] which occurred in Los Angeles on July 19, 2005.

    Its a very revealing article. Ana Marie Cox is the apparently considered the best satirist in the liberal blogosphere. I report you decide (or laugh).

    Mickey Kaus is an influential blogger and a blog that Instapundit reads daily.

    I suppose the LAT was sleeping.

    [link removed]

    [This link is NOT WORK-SAFE. David, now that I have realized that your entire site is not work-safe, I am going to insist that you clearly so state in any future comment that links to your site (or, alternatively, clean up your site — I don’t care which). Any failure to do this in the future will result in your being banned permanently. I hope you understand the reason for this, and don’t take offense. — Patterico]

    [UPDATE: On further request from readers, I am simply deleting the link. David, if you want to direct people to your site in the future, why don’t you clearly state that the link is not work safe, and then spell it out like this: “satire DOT myblogsite DOT com SLASH blog” — that way, people who really want to go to your link can do so, but there is no danger of people hitting non-worksafe links. Please follow these rules. Thanks. — Patterico]

    David (03f14c)

  2. In LAT Says I’m Sorry You Think I Said Something Wrong we mirror (ok, lift) your assessment of the way the LAT treats corrections.

    To us they come off as sincere as a little kid mumbling an apology while looking down at the ground. “My publisher is making me say sorry but I don’t mean it.”

    Insider (80af20)

  3. Nice David. You might at least give us a warning when you post a link to a non-worksafe website. Frankly I thought I was being linked to Kausfiles not a borderline pornography site.

    Dwilkers (a1687a)

  4. I love Not Safe for Work sites, keep on keeping on.

    But getting back to the LAT; the new guy will fix everything. Oh, you say the new guy was the old managing editor? And the old managing editor came from the NYT? And that all the old NYTers he brought into the company have fled? Snore.

    On a factual note: the word is that the Trib is negotiating to sell the Los Angeles Times. The hang up is the Times periferal properties which are actually more valuable than the paper, which by itself is a loser. We are seeing a serious media meltdown in a lot of cities because nobody is reading anything anymore. Were it not for its TV station holdings the Tibune Company would be broke too. So would the New York Times.

    Wait a year

    Howard Veit (baba22)

  5. LAT Says I’m Sorry You Think I Said Something Wrong

    Patterico notes the LAT practice of burying their corrections in places where readers of the original stories won’t necessarily see them:

    “… The Times runs corrections of news stories on Page A2, where nobody sees them, the …

    Independent Sources (4f7430)

  6. Patterico, if you could, please remove that porn link or the entire post. I’m sure that others, like me, will click on the link without first reading the subsequent posts.

    Nels Nelson (741fd5)

  7. looks like the senior execs of the LAT are deliberately driving down their circulation in order to force a sale where they can themselves scoop up the paper at a bargain-bin price.

    These guys are “fixtures” in the Vulture Cap scene, you know.

    ras (f9de13)

  8. Patterico, if you could, please remove that porn link or the entire post. I’m sure that others, like me, will click on the link without first reading the subsequent posts.

    Done. See above.

    Patterico (5e0057)

  9. Thanks.

    Nels Nelson (741fd5)

  10. Who is reading the LA Times anymore any way? What a piece of dog do.

    David L. Parrish (e8c699)

  11. I didn’t include this in the several updates to my latest blog entry, on Roberts, but I wanted to share – While I saw last night that Judge Roberts was not, in fact, a member of the Federalist Society (via Volokh), I also saw that he has been associated with a couple of left-of-center organizations (via Howard Phillips – 2nd entry there). Troubling…

    Aakash (a075a3)

  12. One can almost hear Chuckie Schumer now: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Federalist Society?”

    For advocating the Actual Constitution, the Federalists are whispered to be a deranged cult of legal snake-handlers–yet Ruth Bader-Ginsburg’s ACLU supports terrorist & pedophile ‘rights’, somehow proving her ‘mainstream’ cred.

    “Have you no sense of decency, senators? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

    Noel (ee9fe2)

  13. LAT Watch: Shooting Fish in a Barrel

    It hadn’t occured to me exactly how many Los Angeles Times critiques Independent Sources had run during the past  few days until  I sat down to do a summary for Calblog.

     LAT Columnist Prefers Presidents that are Fat and Undis…

    Independent Sources (4f7430)


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