Here’s an amusing instance of the evolution of a remark from what was actually said to the New York Times’s reporting.
Obviously we’re not talking about the cult of personality on the Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale.
Mark Steyn, as reported in Media Matters:
Obama’s stay-in-school speech is part of “cult of personality,” though not on Kim Jong Il, Saddam scale.
Mark Steyn, as reported in the New York Times:
Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader.
Media Matters gets it right (setting aside the spin of calling it Obama’s “stay-in-school speech.”), and the NYT links to them, which makes it hard to understand how they got this wrong. Unless they weren’t really trying.
UPDATE: Once the error is in the New York Times, lazy reporters around the world pick it up.
UPDATE: Not only has the NYT not corrected yet, they’ve repeated the error.
UPDATE: The NYT has now issued a correction. (It took them five days; only three days longer than it took them to correct the name of a quoted parent from Curtis to Curtiss.) The correction itself has pretty much the complete truth, but the corrected story still gives the erroneous impression that Steyn was comparing Obama to Kim and Saddam. I guess that is as close as the NYT is willing to come to the truth.
Of course, the NYT wire is halfway around the world while the correction is lacing up its shoes, as minor papers repeat the NYT’s faulty reporting.
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