'NY Times' Finally Runs Full Correction on Krugman Column, Announces New Policy

[LRB]

Well I guess later is better than never. But in this case not by much? Isn't it funny how almost all of the NY Times "mistakes" seem to favor one political party? [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-disgusted.gif[/img]

'NY Times' Finally Runs Full Correction on Krugman Column, Announces New Policy

By E&P Staff

Published: October 01, 2005 11:55 PM ET

NEW YORK Just days after it ran an editors' note--under pressure from outside and within--that sort of admitted it had erred in a blast at Fox News' Gerald Rivera during the Katrina tragedy, The New York Times finally ran a full correction on Sunday, on its editorial page, for a miscue by columnist Paul Krugman, while announcing a new policy on noting errors on that page.

Krugman had three times previously admitted getting wrong part of his Aug. 19 column about media recounts of the 2000 Bush-Gore race, but critics kept claiming that he still hadn't gotten it quite right. Editorial Page Editor Gail Collins wrote on Sunday that it had turned into a "correction run amok."

After publishing his third correction on the Web, Krugman asked Collins, she wrote, "if he could refrain from revisiting the subject yet again in print. I agreed, feeling we had reached the point of cruelty to readers. But I was wrong. The correction should have run in the same newspaper where the original error and all its little offspring had appeared."

Collins also announced that the paper would henceforth be running regular corrections and "for the record" explanations under the Times' editorials. Today she published several in the "for the record" category. One notes that Krugman, Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich all incorrectly stated that former FEMA director Michael Brown went to college with his predecessor Joe Allbaugh. Another corrects where Mick Jagger made a certain statement about economics.

And here is what one hopes is the final word on that Krugman column, in the Sunday correction:

"In describing the results of the ballot study by the group led by The Miami Herald in his column of Aug. 26, Paul Krugman relied on the Herald report, which listed only three hypothetical statewide recounts, two of which went to Al Gore. There was, however, a fourth recount, which would have gone to George W. Bush. In this case, the two stricter-standard recounts went to Mr. Bush. A later study, by a group that included The New York Times, used two methods to count ballots: relying on the judgment of a majority of those examining each ballot, or requiring unanimity. Mr. Gore lost one hypothetical recount on the unanimity basis."

[dude1394]

Actually since they are now charging people to be lied to by krugman, they should also pay for the correction as well imo.