At Patterico's Pontifications Patrick Frey notes that "Los Angeles Times corrects false statement regarding Bremer farewell speech." Frey writes:

The Times today issues the following correction:

Iraqi handover — A news analysis about the new Iraqi government in Sunday's Section A stated that outgoing administrator L. Paul Bremer III did not give a farewell speech to the country. His spokesman has since said that Bremer taped an address that was given to Iraqi broadcast media. The spokesman said the address was not publicized to the Western news media.

I'm pleased that the paper has acknowledged its error. However, it is not an excuse that the speech was "not publicized to the Western media." Bremer's farewell address had been common knowledge among readers of internet blogs since at least June 30, when I wrote about Tim Blair's criticism of the Washington Post for making the same...error. Yet the front-page L.A. Times news analysis appeared on July 4 -- 4 days later.

Moral: someone at every major paper should be reading blogs. If they did, the papers might learn different points of view. They might pick up stories that are "not publicized to the Western news media."

And they might make fewer errors on their front pages.

HINDROCKET adds: The Times' excuse is also inadequate in this respect: the newspaper didn't just fail to note that Bremer had given a speech, it affirmatively reported that he had given no farewell address to the Iraqi people and criticized him for it, writing that he seemed "afraid to look in the eye the people he had ruled for more than a year." If the Times is going to criticize Bremer for failing to give a speech, it should, at a minimum, verify that he didn't give one. The Times' false reporting can't be excused by claiming that the speech wasn't publicized to them.

Posted by Scott at 08:49 AM  |    |  

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