| Jan. 26, 2010 |
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Another day, another correction to a political story in the Review-Journal. Now we know that not everyone reads the paper to see political stories, but since the RJ has a conservative bent in its editorial pages, it's amazing how focused the paper is on politics. Now, if it could only concentrate more on accuracy. Today the RJ ran a correction to a Monday political report by Benjamin Spillman. "A Political Eye item in Monday's Review-Journal listing donors to Brian Sandoval's gubernatorial campaign who are also Republicans who support U.S. Sen. Harry Reid contained an error. Anthony Marnell of M Resort is not a member of Republicans for Reid." And here's the funny thing about the correction. Not only is it grammatically awkward, it's wrong. The correction stems from Spillman's Political Notebook, not his blog, the latter of which is called the Political Eye. Not only can the paper not keep track of facts. It can't even get its own features correct. The paper version of the RJ simply calls it a Political Eye item. The online version, which amends corrections atop the guilty story, tells us "A Political Eye a.k.a. Political Notebook item." So, now the RJ is correcting a correction only online and with new rules. If we make a mistake, we'll just change the name of everything. No wonder people can't follow the old newspaper model. They can't even keep track of the brand. At any rate, January's off to a fast start for political corrections, with both political reporters getting into the tally already. ** One last word today on slant. The RJ leads with another "Democrats in trouble" stories. It's placed right next to President Obama's middle class tax relief plan. Essentially the placement means the editors want you to think Obama is in trouble and that his plan is just a gimmick. That's the kind of slant we've grown used to seeing in the paper. It just doesn't make it any easier to read it. |
