Posted on 04/03/2005 10:56:05 PM PDT by CHARLITE
As a rule, when I write a piece about all the mistakes my newspaper, the L.A. Times, makes, I have to wait a week or even two to compile a selection large enough to make it worth our while. It’s not that they don’t come up with a ready supply on a daily basis. Heck, UPS doesn’t deliver the goods with such regularity. But some of the goofs are simply too boring to mention, as when they get the days and times of certain events wrong or when they simply misspell someone’s name. Sometimes, too, the corrections run even longer than the original news items.
Today, however, the Times out-did itself. In the For the Record section devoted to these little mea culpas, they had 13 separate items, and nearly all of them are worth sharing. When people ask me why I continue to subscribe to the paper, my answer is that no matter how bad the news is, the Times will generally find a way to make it amusing. They started out slowly this morning, simply acknowledging that in a story about the Metrolink crash, they had confused Mount Washington with Cypress Park. They next confessed that the mountain from which Moses is believed to have viewed the Promised Land was really Mt. Nebo, not Mt. Nemo. An honest mistake. They simply confused a Biblical mountain with an animated fish.
Geography tripped them up once again when they called the river where Soviet and American forces met in 1945, calling it the Elba. It’s the Elbe. This time, they were obviously thinking of the island to which Napoleon was exiled. It could happen to anyone. It just happens more often to the folks down at the Times. In a story about the Grammy Awards ceremony, they claimed that Santana’s “Supernatural” album had won eight Grammy awards; it had won nine. It also stated that ‘N Sync had once won a Grammy; not true.
Regarding CNN’s Eason Jordan, it stated that in a New York Times opinion piece written in 2003, he admitted he didn’t allow his network to report all it had learned “during the intense early days of combat in Iraq, for fear that releasing certain confidential information would put lives in jeopardy.” In its correction, the Times only went so far as to state that the essay was about his network’s coverage in the years preceding the war as well as in the early days of the conflict. What was left out was the fact that in his original piece, Jordan made the shocking admission that for many years CNN had refrained from reporting anything that touched upon the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime, lest CNN lose its Baghdad bureau.
Perhaps this helps explain why the Times never once mentioned Mr. Jordan’s outrageous statement that the American military had targeted and killed a dozen journalists in Iraq. Not a single mention in fact until the day CNN forced him to resign! You have to wonder if this use of kid gloves where Mr. Jordan is concerned means that his next job will be with the Times.
In the obituary of Robert “Sunny” Rogers, Jr., he was said to have been the child of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. His mother was Roy’s first wife, Arlene. The Times claimed that the farm machine known as the Optimizer weighs 50,000 tons. Not quite. It weighs 50,000 pounds, apparently, not 100,000,000. The Times then informed us that Pope Paul IV died in 1978. It was actually Pope Paul VI. Which only proves that the Times has as much trouble dealing with Roman numerals as with Arabic.
And, finally, in an article in the Food section about Asian cooking, it erroneously translated Omakase as “today’s delicious one; I leave it to you,” when any fool knows that the literal translation means “entrusting,” and when written on a menu means “putting your trust in the chef.”
Now, wouldn’t you think that a newspaper that has as much trouble as the Times does just dealing with English would get on a bus and leave town before even thinking about taking on Japanese?
If you liked this article, perhaps you'll also like Burt's collection from Scorched Earth Press, "Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco." http://www.BurtPrelutsky.com.
Comments: Burt Prelutsky@aol.com
How do they think they can continue to get away with this crap?
I LOVE your tagline, incidentally!
"The Great Ronald Reagan & John Paul II - Heaven's Dream Team."
Char :)
While that number may be dwindling it's still profitable for the owners.
Because it is based out of LA. I go to many restaurant around the Valley and it seems people still are buying a lot of that rag.
The Tyrannotimes looked up, startled. Even with its pea-sized brain, it understood that the end was near.
That's some pretty piss-anty nit-picking there. Don't be quoting from this in front of a bunch of libs if you want to be taken seriously.
The Boston Globe also has to do more than a few "corrections".
Even liberals like Harry Shearer refer to the LA Times as "The LA Dog Trainer"
Kind of on point: In Fridays USA Today there was a story about the stock market's closing numbers for the most recent quarter. It actually said that the market closed its first quarter with the lowest numbers since the 4th quarter of 2004.( this is not a typo or my mistake this is what they wrote - God believing Scout's honor on this )
If this doesn't prove what the ratmedia think about its reads, what does?
Not only do they think they can get away with it, they're preparing to make you pay for it when you access their birdcage filler online.
I used to subscribe to the online 'premium' membership to get the crossword until they went WAY up on the annual price. I don't know if that was the reason, but the other day I got a polling survey about my reaction if the NYT began charging for their online product. They gave several options for the charges by sections: News only, news plus culture, news plus culture plus jobs, etc.
Free access to online newspapers will be as extinct as the dodo and printed newspapers in the very near future.
Most of them aren't worth reading, anyway.
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