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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oral Roberts who wrote (141405)	10/2/2005 12:01:41 PM
From: paret	Respond to of 793799

The Most Painful Correction of All Time Paul Krugman can rest easy - he will not be forced by Gail Collins into personally admitting the error behind his continued stubborn insistence that he got the story right on the 2000 Florida recounts despite widespread evidence to the contrary. October 1st, 2005 decision08.net Instead, Ms. Collins goes through hundreds of words before finally landing here: CORRECTION In describing the results of the ballot study by the group led by The Miami Herald in his column of Aug. 26, Paul Krugman relied on the Herald report, which listed only three hypothetical statewide recounts, two of which went to Al Gore. There was, however, a fourth recount, which would have gone to George W. Bush. In this case, the two stricter-standard recounts went to Mr. Bush. A later study, by a group that included The New York Times, used two methods to count ballots: relying on the judgment of a majority of those examining each ballot, or requiring unanimity. Mr. Gore lost one hypothetical recount on the unanimity basis. In the interim, we have seen one faux correction, outside of the Times normal policy of appending corrections to the bottom of the original piece, that actually repeated the original error, and several calls by the NY Times Public Editor Byron Calame for Krugman to set the record straight. Apparently, wringing a correction out of Krugman is so heinously difficult that it requires a full-fledged intervention by Editor Gail Collins in the form of a spotlight editorial - an editorial that manages to work in a cheap shot at Michael Brown in the course of describing how the Times will handle “minor” mistatements of fact: A “For the Record” column of errata will run under the editorials whenever it’s appropriate. The first one appears today. It corrects several misstatements about when Joe Allbaugh, the former FEMA director, met his successor, Michael Brown, now legendary as a disaster in his own right. Although there have been multitudinous references throughout the media to the two as former college chums or college roommates, they in fact went to different schools. A spokeswoman for Mr. Allbaugh says that while they have been close pals for a long time, they met after graduation. Obviously, if we’re debating the serious issue of allegations about cronyism at FEMA, a friend is a friend whether the relationship was born off campus or on. That’s what makes this one perfect grist for “For the Record.” Collins finds all of this necessary, mind you, to explain how the assertion that Brown and Allbaugh are college chums is in fact wrong in substance but right in spirit. Sure, Gail, whatever, it’s your world, I’m just living in it… It’s enough to make one sympathize with former Public Editor Daniel Okrent, who said: I learned early on in this job that Prof. Krugman would likely be more willing to contribute to the Frist for President campaign than to acknowledge the possibility of error. When he says he agreed ‘reluctantly’ to one correction, he gives new meaning to the word ‘reluctantly’; I can’t come up with an adverb sufficient to encompass his general attitude toward substantive criticism. Okrent is gone, and Calame will be soon enough…but how long will Gail Collins continue to run the Times…right into the ground?