"The article is Googled, cited and quoted, and the wretched Arab propaganda spreads like a virus."

They do append the correction, though.

Kishke:

Yes they do. Four days later. After much damage is done. And let's be honest, many do not pay any attention to the corrections, especially those older folks who do not go online.

But on the deeper level, Isabel Kershner, biased as she is, should not be reporting from Jerusalem —— clearly she bases her reports on textbooks used by Arab schoolchildren in Gaza. If this is not the case, then she is ignorant as a rock and has no business in the business of journalism.

See Marty Peretz' comments on this very topic:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/spine?pid=129856

He says there's no way that Kershner made such an obvious mistake, so the NYT editors introduced the error as they edited her article.

Robert,
When do you say "Correction" or "For the Record"? Obviously a good question -- one that has come up before at the NYT, resulting in policy changes due to goading from the person in the newly created position of "public editor." Following those changes, incidentally, I seem to recall one public editor column suggesting that corrections were (to save face) being shunted off to the "For the Record" section, but I can't immediately put my hands on that column.

Was this indeed an editor's "error" (or due to the editor's ignorance and prejudice)? It could well be the fault of the editor, which I say based on personal experience. It's hard to know for sure, however, because The Times has apparently deleted the original story, and I'm not sharp enough to immediately locate it (though it certainly exists somewhere in Cyberspace).

Really, whether it was an editor's error or reporters error is, to me, somewhat irrelevant: It's part of the same problem. Specifically, the fact that this error (or lie) got by several quality-control steps underscores the old saw that when you say a lie often enough -- directly or implicitly -- it will become true. Your average AP story on the "cycle of violence" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes it seem that both sides have equal greviences; and because the Palestinian territories are what they are, the fault must threfore be due to Israel: Palestinians are poor because Israel is rich; might makes "wrong"; there were "millions" of Palestinian refugees displaced by Israel, etc. Incidentally, here's a link that goes into a bit of detail on The Times corrections policy: http://www.regrettheerror.com/2004/10/ny_times_change.html

Quote: See Marty Peretz' comments on this very topic:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/spine?pid=129856

He says there's no way that Kershner made such an obvious mistake, so the NYT editors introduced the error as they edited her article.

Posted by: Elder of Ziyon at July 30, 2007 10
-----------------

That makes a lot of sense - that would be why the New York Times calls it an "editing" error. It is the editors who are ignorant. Probably the fault of liberal education.

Sorry, I’m just not ready to say that only the editor could have caused the problem. Despite what The Times said, it could well have been the reporter. People who land jobs as foreign correspondents don’t necessarily have specialized knowledge of the place they are covering. In fact, I doubt that most of them have specialized knowledge. They pick up what they need to know on their own. One interesting example is Hannah Allam. She became chief of the most important bureau since the end of the Cold War – Baghdad – at age 25. Not long before that, she’d been a reporter at the St. Paul Pioneer Press – a job she got soon after graduating with a journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma. I’m unaware of any specialized knowledge she had. She spoke conversational Arabic, and she lived for a few years as a young girl in the Middle East, I think; that’s all.

Regarding The Times: I don’t know for sure, but I would suspect that the person who edited the story worked exclusively on the foreign desk, and perhaps worked mainly on stories on the Middle East, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That’s the way I’ve seen it done elsewhere.

When thinking about this issue, I couldn’t help but recall the case of a BBC correspondent covering the funeral of Yasser Arafat, talking in an emotional voice about what a great man Arafat had been. Perhaps somebody like this had a hand with the bungled facts. Again, I’d love to see the original story. I sense it would give you a sense of what happened.

BTW, The Times consistently says that Washington “tacitly supported” the coup that briefly ousted Hugo Chavez. That’s simply not true; it’s a gross oversimplification. The Times is the only U.S. news outlet that says anything like that. As in the issue at hand, however, that’s how some people at The Times interpret history.

Haaaaaa ,
the vice behind the so called "editing" error" .

Robert J. Avrech`s 'arrow' is bull`s eye
quote "in the end it is she who is responsible for her good name" .

I'd would not hesiate to call such remark
a 'seraphic kiss' .

Ain't No typing error .

Joseph:

Thanks so much. I. Kirshner lives quite comfortably in Israel but daily craps all over the Jewish State and the Jewish people. Her dispatches are nothing more than PR releases for Hamas.