A couple of corrections from the New York Times in the last two days that caught my eye. Have the Times' quality control standards slipped drastically, or have I just started noticing them more?
From Friday, September 20:
Because of an editing error, an Op-Ed article yesterday by Jessica T. Mathews and Charles G. Boyd about the need for coercive inspections in Iraq contained added language that does not represent the authors' views. They would strongly oppose the use of United Nations weapons inspectors as spies.Added language????? Sure, why not? I mean, it's not as if op/ed pieces are supposed to reflect the views of the authors, rather than the editors.
Because of an editing error, a front-page article yesterday about the Bush administration's adoption of a doctrine of pre-emptive action against hostile countries placed a passage in quotation marks erroneously in a description of the 33-page document prepared for Congress. The comment — that the president has no intention of allowing any foreign power to catch up with the huge lead the United States has opened since the fall of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago — was the writer's summation of interviews with senior administration officials.I guess when you're trying to run the government's foreign policy from the editorial offices, it's difficult to actually, you know, report the news.