Saturday, March 18, 2006

Below John writes about the most recent embarrassment of the New York Times.Let's not forget the one from earlier this week, amusingly addressed by Mickey Kaus. Last Sunday's New York Times Magazine featured Matt Bai's cover story on former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, touted as the moderate and electable alternative to Hillary Clinton.

[...]

Here is the correction that the Times ran on Wednesday:

The cover photograph in The Times Magazine on Sunday rendered colors incorrectly for the jacket, shirt and tie worn by Mark Warner, the former Virginia governor who is a possible candidate for the presidency. The jacket was charcoal, not maroon; the shirt was light blue, not pink; the tie was dark blue with stripes, not maroon.

The Times's policy rules out alteration of photographs that depict actual news scenes and, even in a contrived illustration, requires acknowledgment in a credit. In this case, the film that was used can cause colors to shift, and the processing altered them further; the change escaped notice because of a misunderstanding by the editors.

Mickey Kaus calls it the Times "correction obfuscation of the week" and comments: "The film made us do it!"