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NYT correction of the day

By Michelle Malkin  •  July 10, 2008 10:36 AM

From the professional, credentialed, holier-than-thou journalists at the New York Times, here’s the incredible correction of the day:

Link:

Editors’ Note: July 9, 2008

A front-page picture caption on June 26 describing an 11-month-old boy whose legs were in casts stated that his legs were broken and that his mother said the injuries were caused by an episode of state-sponsored violence in Zimbabwe. After the picture and an accompanying article that also described the injuries were published, The New York Times took the boy to a medical clinic in Harare for help. When the casts were removed, medical workers there discovered the boy had club feet. Doctors said on Monday that X-rays of the baby’s legs showed no evidence of bone fractures.

The mother subsequently admitted that she had exaggerated injuries she said had been sustained by the boy during an attack by governing party militia. In multiple interviews, she said that youths backing President Robert Mugabe had thrown her son to the concrete floor — and she still says that event did occur.

The owner of the house where she and the baby were staying confirmed that marauding youths from the governing party had attacked the house. He said he believed the baby had been thrown to the floor during the attack, but the owner was in a different room and did not witness it firsthand. The landlord, other lodgers, neighbors and opposition supporters also confirmed that the mother had been singled out because her husband was an opposition member.

The mother, however, later told The Times that the boy had been wearing casts even at the time of the attack, as part of a treatment he had received for his club feet at a different medical facility. She said she misrepresented the boy’s injuries to generate help because she could not afford corrective surgery for the boy.

Regret The Error has more.

Posted in: New York Times

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Comments

  1. #1
    On July 10th, 2008 at 10:44 am, wighttrasch said:

    Of course it was incorrectly reported, and of course it was regarding Zimbabwe.

    They could report that Mugabe uses flying monkeys to terrorize his own people, but no one would listen or care.

  2. #2
    On July 10th, 2008 at 10:47 am, sonofdy said:

    Nobody cares about blacks oppressing blacks or blacks oppressing whites, they only care when whites oppress anyone else. Witness dufar vs bosnia.

  3. #3
    On July 10th, 2008 at 10:50 am, wighttrasch said:

    sonofdy, and we still haven’t gotten the entire story of the oppressed Jewish population out of the Bosnian conflict…

    That’s another one we’ll hear nothing about.

  4. #4
    On July 10th, 2008 at 10:53 am, mchristian said:

    The Times never lets the facts get in the way of the truth.

  5. #5
    On July 10th, 2008 at 10:54 am, cpodug said:

    After a while, the distortion, lies and half-truths published by the MSM, and the Slimes in particular, get just a little bit old. How can anybody take them seriously any more?

  6. #6
    On July 10th, 2008 at 10:54 am, rambler said:

    The NYT isn’t fit for a compost pile.

  7. #7
    On July 10th, 2008 at 11:00 am, MtsEdge said:

    What I was trying to discern was whether the Times reported the falsehood BEFORE or AFTER they learned the truth. In this case, it appears that they corrected themselves once the real reason for his condition became known. I don’t have a lot of good for the NYT, but I’m having a hard time piling on here.

    BTW, would anyone here NOT have taken the boy to a facility for treatment?

  8. #8
    On July 10th, 2008 at 11:04 am, Red State Skeptic said:

    At least the New York Times acknowledges when it gets something wrong. (cough, Bilal Hussein)

  9. #9
    On July 10th, 2008 at 11:13 am, 30 pcs of silver said:

    “Intellectuals Lie, the Powerless Die.”

  10. #10
    On July 10th, 2008 at 11:18 am, RobM1981 said:

    You guys see the NY Post today? It’s on Drudge, too.

    It seems as if the NYT’s dedication to balanced and thorough reporting continues to pay off.

    Their stock is now essentially useful only as toilet paper, which is more than I can say for their copy.

    More rouge for the Gray Lady! She already looks like a corpse…

  11. #11
    On July 10th, 2008 at 12:09 pm, On-my-soap-box said:

    On July 10th, 2008 at 10:54 am, rambler said:
    The NYT isn’t fit for a compost pile.

    If you put wet newspapers in your flower beds before planting, weeds will not grow.

    If you try this with the NYT, your plants get up and leave.

    It is something you have to see to believe! :roll:

  12. #12
    On July 10th, 2008 at 12:44 pm, Goldwater Knight said:

    That’s actually distgusting. This reminds me of a 1994 Pultzer Prize winning photo.

    Legend has it Kevin Carter commited suicide when ‘they’ grilled him heavily because he did nothing to help the child, and was doing a ton of drugs on top of it.

  13. #13
    On July 10th, 2008 at 12:51 pm, Goldwater Knight said:

    BTW that 1994 photo was first featured in The New York Times.

  14. #14
    On July 10th, 2008 at 1:40 pm, MtsEdge said:

    Legend has it Kevin Carter commited suicide when ‘they’ grilled him heavily because he did nothing to help the child, and was doing a ton of drugs on top of it.

    Sickening to think the man could take the time to photographically exploit this child’s agony, yet couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger to help.

    That the NYT, the Pulitzer Prize Board, and Columbia University published and awarded accolades for such a heinous breach of humanity is appalling. Tells me that, to them, people are just objects to be photographed and reported on, not to be emphasized with or cared for. It’s not surprising to me that someone who cared so very little for a fellow human being would take his own life. Disgusting.

  15. #15
    On July 10th, 2008 at 2:14 pm, Lifeofthemind said:

    On this one I’ll give a break to the Times. Given that I do not read the paper and think the President should issue an executive order prohibiting the expenditure of any government funds to purchase copies of the paper no one can accuse me of being a shill for the NYT.

    THe Ties reporter remembered the scandal with the child from 1994 and tried to do the right thing. He brought the kid who was in a cast to the hospital. For that he can not be criticized. The fact that the child’s mother was attempting to manipulate the Times to get medical care for her child is a legitimate story. Doing background on why she is doing this is also fair.

    Was the Times gullible and used? Of course it was and they should be much more suspicious of stories of hardship and pleas for assistance but the fact is they see many ugly things out there. Mugabe’s thugs are capable of what she claimed according to other credible reports. Hopefully the Ties will be less susceptible to manipulation by fraudsters like the Palestinian fake news planters while still being human enough to help a sick or dieing child. Hope that I would have taken the kid to a hospital.

  16. #16
    On July 10th, 2008 at 3:19 pm, MtsEdge said:

    emphasized empathized

  17. #17
    On July 10th, 2008 at 3:39 pm, corkie said:

    On July 10th, 2008 at 11:04 am, Red State Skeptic said:

    At least the New York Times acknowledges when it gets something wrong. (cough, Bilal Hussein)

    What was wrong about the story about Bilal Hussein? Did someone claim that the Iraqi courts weren’t going to honor the amnesty laws?

  18. #18
    On July 11th, 2008 at 9:23 am, ArizonaNeanderthal said:

    1. The New York Times, the Left and MSM in general along with the Hollywood Space Cases are determined to get us involved in Zimbabwe, Sudan and the Balkans. Why? What is our vital interest there? There aren’t any. They rage against involvement in Iraq and Iran but want us involved everywhere else.
    Personally I wish we had NOT invaded Iraq. But we did, we have an Army there and have an obligation to win. The Left feels an obligation to make us lose. At least Iraq sits close to the Straits of Hormuz and the Saudi oil fields. If we could grow a set we could ignore those too and develop our own reserves.
    But Africa and Asia can solve their own problems and we can’t really help them. And if in solving their problems it takes a civil war so be it. We had our Revolution and Civil War. In what country where we, the UN or anybody else intervened is the situation better? The warring parties just sit tight, re-arm and wait for the foreigners to leave. UN Peacekeepers in Rwanda didn’t do much good.

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