Comments on: New York Times to Thomas Friedman: We won’t fix your error http://mediabugs.org/blog/2011/08/22/new-york-times-thomas-friedman/ Fix the news Tue, 23 Sep 2014 03:33:05 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.38 By: The blotter: Week ending 28 August 2011 | ARTS & FARCES internet http://mediabugs.org/blog/2011/08/22/new-york-times-thomas-friedman/comment-page-1/#comment-564 Sun, 19 May 2013 15:02:52 +0000 http://mediabugs.org/blog/?p=516#comment-564 […] MediaBugs received an error report on a Thomas Friedman New York Times column from 2009. Accordingly, MediaBugs contacted Friedman and the Times. Friedman agrees that the column should be corrected. The Times refuses to fix the error, telling MediaBugs that “the error is too old to fix.” The Times editors refused to be quoted and referred MediaBugs to its communications department “for an official statement.” Here it is: “For practical reasons, the New York Times opinion pages do not customarily correct minor errors that are more than a year old.” Friedman reported that President George H.W. Bush (Bush the First) had signed the Rio Treaty while arguing that US “Republicans can claim as much credit for America’s environmental leadership as Democrats.” He didn’t and they can’t; not exactly a minor error for the US paper of record. […]

]]> By: Sherwin Arnott http://mediabugs.org/blog/2011/08/22/new-york-times-thomas-friedman/comment-page-1/#comment-515 Wed, 21 Sep 2011 22:19:27 +0000 http://mediabugs.org/blog/?p=516#comment-515 The error needs to be fixed. On the other hand, the New York Times’ mistake also needs to be a matter of public record. So the archive needs to, for integrity sake, make note of the original version as well as correct the error, lest someone be mistaken about the history. The correction should also be time stamped so that someone can tell just how long it was published incorrectly for.

It’s a good example of how bad reporting can spin history – which is often the point.

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