The choice of Parakeets, Cockateils, and Canaries everywhere!
Posted on 09/28/2005 9:00:20 AM PDT by new yorker 77
NEW YORK: The New York Times on Wednesday retracted the basis of a story in Tuesday's paper that erroneously reported that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts had authored an unsigned memo on libel law. In an unusual move, the newspaper published two versions of the correction, one on the regular A-2 corrections page, and another on A22 in the national news section, which ran 243 words. The second version was also written by the same writer of the original story, Adam Liptak.
Liptak's first story, published on an inside A section page, reported that a multi-paged memo on the precedent-setting 1964 Supreme Court decision in New York Times vs. Sullivan had been written by Roberts during his time as a White House lawyer in the early 1980s. That ruling held that libel could only be found if a news organization reported false information with actual malice.
The story described the memo as "a blistering 30-page critique of the case."
On Wednesday, the correction revealed that Roberts, who is nominated to be chief justice of the Supreme Court and faces a U.S. Senate vote on Thursday, did not author the memo, saying, "The Times erroneously attributed it to him."
The paper went on to state that Bruce Fein, a Washington lawyer and former Federal Communications Commission counsel under Ronald Reagan, said that he wrote the memorandum. It added that the undated memo was in papers from Roberts's years as a lawyer in the Reagan administration.
Liptak and Managing Editor John Geddes were not immediately available for comment Wednesday.
The correction did not explain if the paper took further efforts to authenticate the memo prior to the original story, saying only that "people quoted in the article discussed the Fein memorandum, provided to them by a reporter, on the assumption that it had been written by Judge Roberts."
Wednesday's correction added that the papers containing the memo "also included another memorandum, signed by Judge Roberts, that briefly described his own critical views on the Sullivan case. In that memorandum, dated Aug. 28, 1985, Mr. Roberts offered what he called "my own personal view" on the proper balance between the interests of libel plaintiffs and the interests of the press," the correction added. "He said he would favor relaxing the standards established by the Sullivan case, which gave the press increased protection from libel suits brought by public officials, in exchange for eliminating punitive damages, which can often account for the bulk of libel awards."
Good for lining the litter box too.
Wonder how they made that assumption...
That threshold is met every day...
I wonder how many times the MSM can get caught lying before their credibility actually reaches zero. They're getting pretty close now, but there's still a few people who believe anything they hear from a "mainstream" source.
Rather's latest standard for journalism seems to take that even a bit further. Fake, but not proven inaccurate. So as long as the story behind what the fake proves has not been proven inaccurate, it's legitimate news.
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