Thursday, September 29, 2005

Shall we lose all sense of proportion?

In today's Powerline, John Hinderaker writes:
Over the years, we have had a lot of fun with the Corrections section off the New York Times. That section constitutes a running commentary on the bias so often manifested in that newspaper; even more strikingly, it sometimes reveals a stunning lack of high school-level knowledge of history, science and literature on the part of Times reporters and editors. Today's Corrections include a mind-blowing example of this genre:
The About New York column yesterday, about an imagined conversation with God at a Manhattan diner, referred incorrectly to the Bible to which the thickness of the menu was likened. It is the King James Version, not St. James.

I'm speechless.
I'm the last to resist criticizing the New York Times over accuracy issues, but this seems ... well, petty. Not quite a typographical error, but I'm sure I've heard this error made even by quite devout Christians (maybe more so by Catholics.)

Trying to make a deep connection to the Times' "stunning lack of ... knowledge of history" based on this strikes me as an awful lot of soup from one shinbone.

(P.S. Apologies for the momentary misspelling of Hinderaker's name, now corrected.)

3 comments:

vnjagvet said...

Yeah, Seneca, but where was the famed stylebook? Do you think this would have happened the the Times of thirty years ago?

I think John was just pointing out a "sign of the Times".

Maybe they fired one too many editors.

I daresay this might be considered by some somewhat less picky than the Times editorial board has been with the current administration.

Charlie Martin said...

Sometimes an oopsie is just an oopsie.

Unknown said...

I think that is what happens when people become hypersensitive.

I had to quit watching 60 Minutes because of that. I saw a cheap shot everywhere.

I think Powerline has spent so much time bird dogging the NYT that they are seeing stuff all the time.

and sometimes people really do just screw up.