Blogger Gene Miller notices the British debut of Jack Hitt’s NYT magazine piece on El Salvadoran abortion law. It appeared in the Observer this Sunday with no corrections or clarifications of its false claims about Carmen Climaco.

Climaco appears, just as in the NYT piece, as a sympathetic figure serving 30 years for having an abortion at 18 weeks when, in fact, a court ruled that she had a full-term live birth, “and the official cause of death was asphyxia by strangulation.”

This is why it’s so important to ask questions about coverage by the NYT, Washington Post and AP. We spend a lot of time addressing bias, mistakes, and lies on a piecemeal basis. But once a whopper like the Climaco one becomes a high-profile lie, an urbane untruth carrying the creds of no less than the NYT, you better believe it will live on.

Just look at Tim Blair. More than three years later, he’s still fighting the good fight against the plastic turkey myth of Bush’s Thanksgiving trip to Iraq. That little fib first appeared in the NYT and LAT. Oops.

Who’s going on Climaco-watch?

The Guardian/Observer readers’ editor contact info is here. “It is the policy of the Guardian to correct significant errors as soon as possible.”

Update: If you missed it, go check out Allah’s video of UPI’s Pentagon reporter on Reliable Sources this weekend: “[I]f as a reporter you do ask the national security question, all of a sudden you’re carrying Bush’s water.” Sounds like one of the good ones.

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