11 of 15?
A correction in today’s L.A. Times reads:
Saudi Arabia: An editorial Friday about security issues in Saudi Arabia said 11 of the 15 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi. There were 19 hijackers, of whom 15 were Saudi.
I don’t mean to jump down the editors’ throats inappropriately here. But doesn’t this seem like a surprising error to make? How many times have we heard it repeated that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi?
Didn’t you know there were 19 hijackers?
I just see this as another reminder not to take editorials as infallible just because they look so official, seemingly emanating from the paper itself rather than from any one human being. Editorials are written by people, not newspapers — and people make mistakes. Don’t forget that.
Of course they should have gotten it right the first time, but as errors go, this one strikes me as a relatively benign brain fart. That Saudis accounted for 15 of the 19 is such a cliché that I can easily see someone getting the number 15 in his head, alongside the factoid that Saudis accounted for all but four of the 9-11 terrorists, but forgetting that 15 was the Saudi subtotal rather than the total.
Xrlq (ca1ad5) — 8/16/2005 @ 7:09 amI agree. Like I said, I don’t mean to make too much of it. It just amuses me how seriously these people take themselves — yet they get simple stuff like this wrong.
Patterico (0d1b2d) — 8/16/2005 @ 9:30 am