The New York Times claims to be preparing a correction over this, but a correction a lot fewer people are likely to read is like telling a jury to disregard what they’ve just heard.
A wily lawyer knows a jury can’t disregard what they’ve already heard, and so does an agenda-driven newspaper.
On Jan. 8, The New York Times published an article by John F. Burns about the British government’s investigation into allegations of crimes committed by employees of News Corp.’s UK newspaper division, News International. Burns wrote:
News International’s acknowledgment that the The News of the World had hacked into [a] teenager’s phone at a time when there was still hope that she remained alive, and deleted messages left by her family and friends so as to make room for others, was a watershed in the scandal.
That’s a reference to a report from last July by the Guardian. Its disclosure that investigators working for the News of the World had intercepted and erased voicemails intended for murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler was perhaps the single most incendiary detail in the entire scandal and helped trigger the wave of inquiries and resignations that followed.
The problem: It wasn’t accurate, as the Guardian acknowledged in an epic Dec. 20 correction that it appended to that story and 36 others that had repeated the claim. In fact, investigators now say Dowler’s phone carrier automatically deleted the messages in question.
You ever notice that it’s always the oh-so-J-schooled MSM making these epic errors? We lowly bloggers make mistakes, sure, but the doozies are almost always made by those who like to lecture us about accuracy and capital-J journalism.
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