Duany vs. the New York Times
In this month's edition of
Metropolitan Home, Andres Duany, the pioneer of the New Urbanist architectural movement, takes a couple of swipes at
the Times for bias in its reporting on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Seaside, Florida (an early New Urbanist community), and Duany and team's involvement in the Gulf Coast rebuilding effort.
The article is not available online, but here are two excerpts from the interview:
Met Home: Seaside...is perhaps the most renowned [new urbanist community]. But the New York Times recently published a story suggesting that all was not well in paradise. Can you respond?Duany: If you read past the scandalmongering headline ["Seaside at 25: Troubles in Paradise"], the problem--apart from hurricane damage--is the old saw that the place has gotten too expensive. That is indeed a problem with the confluence of excellence and scarcity.......Met Home: ...Your proposals for rebuilding southern Mississippi have met with resistance from locals. Why are they upset?Duany: ...It may have been the equally negative New York Times article [that]...interviewed a confused lady who said that she was terrified that the plan would remove her house and turn the land into a golf course. In fact, the Biloxi plan proposed exactly the opposite.... We corrected this factual misrepresentation in a letter to the Times--which it did not publish. This is typical of the bias.newspapers,
media,
bias,
New York Times
Correction error corrected--Abramoff may go to jail for some duration sometime in the future
From today's
Washington Post:
Correction to This ArticleA May 27 correction incorrectly stated that former lobbyist Jack Abramoff is serving time in prison in connection with the fraudulent purchase of a fleet of casino cruise boats. A federal judge sentenced Abramoff on March 29 to five years and 10 months in prison but postponed Abramoff's confinement for at least 90 days while he cooperates with federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies.Original correction follows:
Correction to This ArticleA May 26 article misstated the prison term for former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He is serving five years and 10 months, not five to 10 months, for his role in the fraudulent purchase of a fleet of casino cruise boats.I hope that clears that up.
newspapers,
media,
errors,
Washington Post
Austin American-Statesman fat-fingers their correction
From
today's paper:
05.31.06
A
Page One story on May 29 about free tickets to University of Texax football games should have cais
JAmes Huffines, chairman of the university regents, would prefer a policy that would allow former regents to purchase tickets if they, themselves, were attending the game.
They sure do things differently down in Texax. Anyone know what "cais" means?
newspapers,
media,
errors
Corrections tally - day 2
A couple of corrections from yesterday's post. May has thirty-one days, not thirty. The corrections counts from the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times were incorrect because I checked before the corrections had been posted for the day. Today's post corrects the above errors.
I regret the errors.
Options backdating scandal--the economist who started it all
Today's
Wall Street Journal has
an article about
Erik Lie, the economist who first proposed that share price run-ups after option grants could be due to the intentional backdating of option grants.
Here is a link to his original 2005 paper. He won't have to worry about gaining tenure after this.
Wall Street Journal,
options,
backdating
A defense of the public relations profession and its role in the news...
From
the letters to the
Public Editor of the
New York Times:
It would have been nice if you had given a definition of "enterprise stories," a term you used in your headline and the article ["
That First Inkling: The Origins of Enterprise Stories" (May 7)
]. As a lifelong communications professional, I detect a sense of disdain when you write, "Only two of the 23 enterprise stories started with ideas from public relations practitioners," as if having more stories originate with P.R. people would be a bad thing.
Give reporters credit that they know how to ignore the bad ideas they receive and welcome the good ideas, which can come from anyone, even P.R. people.
JEANNETTE PALADINO
New York, May 7, 2006
newspapers,
media,
errors
Gender bender #2
From the
Arizona Republic:
Other notable DVDs released this week, May 26, Weekend Living, E2
In Transamerica, Felicity Huffman plays a man in the final stage of becoming a woman. The procedure was described incorrectly.Here's the
original:
Transamerica ($27): Felicity Huffman was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of a woman attempting to become a man. Aren't there easier ways to break the glass ceiling? Oh, right, guess not.Take it from someone who knows: if you're going to crack wise, get your facts straight!
newspapers,
media,
errors
Corrections tally - day 1
newspapers,
media,
errors
Tallying the errors
A letter to the Public Editor from Pat Murphy, a newspaperman from Ketchum, Idaho, in yesterday's
New York Times takes the newspaper to task for the number of corrections it publishes. "Reflect on the many major errors and the slipshod reporting that have been approved in the past few years, plus all the corrections The Times publishes," Murphy says. (
Here's one of Murphy's commentaries for an Idaho newspaper.)
I've been thinking about this for the past couple of weeks. As I survey corrections pages, the Times seems to have more of them, on a daily basis, than any other. Was this perception correct? Is the number of corrections a fair measure of the quality of a newspaper?
We'll take a look at this, over the next several weeks. Who has the most corrections? Who has the least? Why the difference? Is it, as the letter-writer suggests, a culture of sloppiness and mistakes at the Times? Or are there other factors?
Stay tuned... by the way, tally of corrections in today's Times: 0.
newspapers,
media,
errors,
New York Times
Stories like this make you glad you don't live in Baltimore
From today's
Baltimore Sun:
An article in yesterday's editions on a crash and homicide in Baltimore's Brooklyn neighborhood misidentified the woman whose rowhouse was hit by a car. She is Emma Luck.
Here's the headline of the article:
Car with body inside crashes into yardEgads. Any more incidents like that, Emma's going to have to change her name.
newspapers,
media,
errors
Pogue gets small item wrong, bigger issue right
From today's
New York Times:
The
David Pogue column in Business Day yesterday, about the
Samsung Helix, a radio for XM satellite broadcasts that can also record, described a "wish list" feature incorrectly. While users can be alerted to a designated band or song playing on another channel, the radio will not automatically tune to that channel to record it; the user must do that manually. The column also incorrectly attributed a quotation about legal objections to lawyers for the
Recording Industry Association of America, which is suing XM. They have not said the player is "a tool for copyright infringement." That was the columnist's assessment of the recording industry's position. (
Go to Article)
Well, let's see what
the lawsuit filed by the record labels against XM (thanks
Orbitcast!) says on the matter:
XM is not licensed by Plaintiffs [Atlantic Records, Warner Records, Interscope Records, et. al.] - and pays Plaintiffs nothing - for this unauthorized distribution of Plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings. XM's conduct thus amounts to infringement of Plaintiffs' exclusive right under the Copyright Act to control the distribution and reproduction of their recordings.
If Pogue made an error in his attribution, it's an awfully small one. The words he uses and the words in the lawsuit are almost identical. The lawsuit doesn't dwell on the tool (perhaps this is the error the RIAA attorneys pointed out?) but clearly identified XM's service as an "infringement" of their "copyrighted recordings." Perhaps there's a small detail that's incorrect (debatable in my view) but on the larger issue he's absolutely correct.
Pogue also mentions that the RIAA's lawyers are "increasingly busy." He's got that right--see their
latest anti-piracy status report!
newspapers,
media,
errors,
piracy,
music
Headline writer gets it very wrong
From today's
Washington Post:
Correction to This ArticleThe headline on a May 24 Business article about Fannie Mae chief executive Daniel H. Mudd mischaracterized what a report said about Mudd's knowledge of accounting problems at the mortgage finance company. The regulator's report said that Mudd was aware of allegations of misdeeds, not that he was aware of misdeeds.Here's the headline as it appeared:
Regulator Says Mudd Knew of MisdeedsHere's what it should have said:
Regulator Says Mudd Knew of Allegations of Misdeeds
A major difference, wouldn't you think? This is one of those instances where a simple correction seems inadequate. Maybe an Editor's note of equal prominence to the original article?
newspapers,
media,
errors
Multi-tasking, Mexican style
From today's
New York Times:
An article on Tuesday about the Mexican presidential race incorrectly described the actions of Juan Camilo Mouriño, the campaign manager for Felipe Calderón, during an interview. He was looking at his laptop to monitor bets being placed on each candidate on an Internet site; he was not checking sports scores. (Go to Article)newspapers,
media,
errors
A salute to the Times' series on executive pay
The New York Times has been publishing
a series of articles on executive pay for the past two months. While this story has had a long run (boiling over perhaps around the
Jack Welch divorce case and its exposure of
the innumerable perks that comprised his retirement package), the Times series is doing a great job of detailing the vast scope of the problem--from perks to options, from weak shareholders to rubber-stamp boards.
Today's page one article shows in stark relief the pay given to
Home Depot CEO
Robert Nardelli as compared to his predecessors, the company's founders
Arthur Blank and
Bernie Marcus. While the latter two never received more than $1 million in salary and often refused bonuses, according to the article Nardelli has received nearly $250 million in salary, bonus and stock-related compensation over the past five years.
Moreover, it focuses on the role the board has in approving such large pay packages. The Home Depot board has several members with ties to
GE, Nardelli's former company.
For a public company, the
board of directors serves as the CEO's boss. The inability to restrain CEO pay must be laid at their feet.
And for CEOs, if you want to make billions, start a business or invest your own money. Take some downside risk. Don't lever up on the public shareholders' dime.
business,
newspapers,
media,
compensation
Objects in this mirror are smaller than they appear
From today's
Wall Street Journal:
THE HEIGHTS of three proposed skyscrapers at the World Trade Center are as follows: Tower 2 will be between 1,000 feet and 1,150 feet; Tower 3 will be 950 feet to 1,050 feet; Tower 4 will be 900 feet to 1,000 feet. A Marketplace article last Wednesday gave higher heights due to erroneous information supplied by the towers' builder, Silverstein Properties Inc., and the government agency overseeing the rebuilding, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.I'm sorely tempted to make a comment here, but I will try to refrain. Something about exaggerating and towers. Never mind.
newspapers,
media,
errors
What's in a name? #3
From the
Chicago Tribune:
May 24, 2006
- Internet security expert Bruce Schneier's name was misspelled in a Page 1 story May 14 on privacy and communications.
May 23, 2006
- A Personals item Monday misspelled the last name of Emily Robison, a member of the Dixie Chicks.
- In Sunday's Home & Garden section, a story about trilliums misspelled the name of Lake Forest resident Louis Pickus
Famous or anonymous, page one through the last page in the newspaper, names are misspelled. Want them to get your name right? Call yourself Jane Smith.
newspapers,
media,
errors
Gender bending
From today's
Los Angeles Times:
Offshore drilling: An editorial Wednesday referred incorrectly to the gender of an official in the Interior Department. Johnnie Burton is female.In case you weren't aware, there are two prominent female Johnnie Burtons (zero males). The Times was referring to
this Johnnie Burton, not
this one.
...and from today's
Chicago Tribune:
- In an Arts & Entertainment story Sunday about the "X-Men" sequel, actress Dania Ramirez was incorrectly referred to as "he."
newspapers,
media,
errors
More options backdating...
Today's
Journal has
another front-page article on companies whose option grants are oddly timed to coincide with intrayear lows in the stock price. The writers,
Charles Forelle and
James Bandler (give these guys a Pulitzer next year, OK?), identify five additional companies--
Trident Microsystems,
Renal Care Group,
Boston Communications Group (which just survived a nasty
patent litigation),
KLA-Tencor and
Meade Instruments--with statistically near-impossible patterns of option grants (see method used
here).
The most likely culprit--intentional
backdating of options. This situation (approaching scandal level, wouldn't you say?) has ended the careers of several executives, and that's only the beginning.
Why is it that people already making gobs of money feel the need to cheat, steal or sleaze their way to yet more?
newspapers,
media,
errors,
Wall Street Journal
Standing-room airplane seats - the drama continues
Byron Calame, the Times' ombudsman, publishes in today's paper
an autopsy of how
the standing room airplane seat story could have found its way to page 1 with a major error at its core.
This blog referred to the article and
Airbus' retractions in
this post and some others that same day. Reading Calame's report, Airbus had a lot to complain about. Even the
May 2 correction the Times published did not illuminate what the post-mortem did--that there was no evidence the standing room seat idea had been discussed with anyone for two years--a far cry from the article's assertion that "Airbus has been quietly pitching the standing-room-only option to Asian carriers, though none have agreed to it yet."
An
editor's note on May 4 continued the backtracking, but only today's analysis exposed the story for what it was: a banal business-section story on airplane-seat design leveraging a sexy piece of data and some speculation to transform itself into a Page 1 story, with lots of guilty hands touching it along the way.
newspapers,
media,
errors,
New York Times
Yet another way to make parents look dumb to their kids...
From the
Chicago Tribune:
May 21, 2006
- In today's Comics Section, the Kids Across/Parents Down puzzle contains an error. The clue for 1 Down is: The 4A part of an egg.
The Tribune regrets the error.
newspapers,
media,
errors
Bravo Philadelphia Inquirer and Baltimore Sun!
The
Philadelphia Inquirer and
Baltimore Sun also express regret for errors they make.
newspapers,
media,
errors
Op-Ed sources need corroboration and identification
From the
Washington Post:
Correction to This Article The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, hasn't held any secret meetings with Iranian officials in Baghdad to discuss Iraq. David Ignatius's May 19 op-ed column erred in reporting that several such meetings between Khalilzad and an Iranian representative took place earlier this year.
Here is the paragraph where the error was made:
The administration has been so intent on building a firm coalition that it has closed off opportunities for bilateral contact. The U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, held several secret meetings with an Iranian representative around the turn of the year, I'm told, and public statements by both sides seemed to promise a formal U.S.-Iranian dialogue about Iraq. But Rice froze that channel in March and told Khalilzad it wasn't the right time to meet."I'm told"??? David Ignatius was told wrong, I guess. Compared to this, the
Times' weak boilerplate "according to a high-ranking government official who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to reveal this information" sounds Pulitzer-worthy.
Post op-ed editors, improve your performance. Demand corroboration and identification of your contributors' sources.
newspapers,
media,
errors
A significant omission
From the May 18 WSJ (correction repeated on May 19):
THE MAY 16 ARTICLE "Rove's Camp Takes Center of Web Storm" about Internet postings on the investigation into presidential adviser Karl Rove mentioned a lawsuit filed by former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal against Matt Drudge for a report alleging Mr. Blumenthal had a history of spousal abuse. The story accurately stated that the parties reached a settlement involving Mr. Blumenthal paying Mr. Drudge $2,500 but failed to note that Mr. Drudge had retracted and apologized for the report.
This was a significant mistake by the Journal. By omitting the fact that Drudge had apologized and retracted his assertion, but included the fact Blumenthal had paid money to Drudge, they led the reader to believe that he was guilty of the charge. And given the stigma associated with wife-beating, the Journal had an extra obligation to be scrupulously complete in its reporting.
Blumenthal was one of the Journal editorial page's whipping boys during the Clinton administration. That additional fact calls into question the Journal's objectivity and raises questions of leakage between news and editorial that damage the Journal.
newspapers,
media,
errors
The Tribune regrets the error
Of the dozen or so corrections pages I monitor every day, the Tribune is the only one (except for the San Francisco Chronicle, the subject of a post yesterday) that expresses regret for their mistakes.
"The Tribune regrets the error" may sound a bit old-fashioned, but it demonstrates respect for their readership and shows clearly that they care about the quality of their paper.
Let's bring back "We regret the error" to other newspapers. Whaddaya say?
newspapers, errors
Additional pain & suffering: obituary errors #4
From today's Times:
An obituary on Sunday about George Lenchner, father of the Math Olympiad competition for young mathematics pupils, failed a basic math test when it described the relationship between his age, 88, and the series of numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 11, 22, 44 and 88. They are the individual factors, or divisors, of 88, but not an example of how a number is factored. (Go to Article) An obituary on Tuesday about George Crile, a television news producer, misstated part of the name of the Indiana newspaper where he worked early in his career. It was The Gary Post-Tribune (now just The Post-Tribune), not The Gary Post-Register. (Go to Article)newspapers,
New York Times,
obituaries,
errors
The SF Chronicle takes errors seriously!
From the
corrections page of the San Francisco Chronicle:
It is the policy of The Chronicle to promptly correct errors of fact and to promptly clarify potentially confusing statements. The policy applies to all newsroom employees.Errors, whether brought to our attention by readers or staff members, will be corrected quickly and in a straightforward manner.It will be considered unprofessional conduct and a breach of duty if employees are notified of possible errors but fail to respond. Correcting errors and clarifying ambiguous information is a virtue and an admirable practice.Significant corrections are noted on the corrections page for seven days and the archived copy of the article will be annotated. Please send requests for corrections to feedback@sfgate.com.Whew! Anyway, this was interesting but not interesting enough to post on without a notable error to report from yesterday's paper:
Because of a production error, the last three "down" clues were omitted from the crossword puzzle in Datebook on Monday. They are: 64. Lever on a casino "bandit." 65. Air rifle ammo. 66. Miniature dog. (5/16)
Now that must have been a difficult crossword.
newspapers,
errors
An error that will be invisible to half the population
From today's
Wall Street Journal:
THE ANNA WILLIAM Nantucket bag reviewed in the Catalog Critic column in Friday's Weekend Journal was a clutch, and the company's site is being redesigned this month. The column erroneously suggested the bag was a tote and that the site would be redesigned in June.
newspapers,
errors
What's in a name? #2
From today's
Times:
An article yesterday about efforts by President Vicente Fox of Mexico to defuse concerns about United States plans to use National Guard troops for border security misstated the surname of a political analyst who said Mexico needed to show it was willing to accept such measures. She is Guadalupe Gonzalez, not Gómez. (Go to Article)
•
An article in Business Day yesterday about Bausch & Lomb's decision to halt worldwide sales of its ReNu With MoistureLoc cleaner misidentified one product that the company planned to market more aggressively as a replacement. It is the ReNu MultiPlus, not MultiUse. The article also misspelled the surname of the company's chairman and chief executive. (It was also misspelled in articles on Saturday and Sunday.) He is Ronald L. Zarrella, not Zarella. (Go to Article)
•
The TV Sports column on May 9, about NBC's coverage of the Kentucky Derby, misstated the surname of the trainer of Sharp Humor. He is Dale Romans, not Roman. (Go to Article)
•
An article in The Arts yesterday about readings by authors at corporate offices misstated the title of the new book by Simon Schama, who read from it to Google employees. It is "Rough Crossings," not "Rough Passages." (Go to Article)
•
An article in The Arts last Wednesday about a dispute between the licensing agent for the musical "Chicago" and Herbert H. Lehman High School in the Bronx, which wanted to stage the show, misspelled the surname of the school's drama teacher. He is Anthony Cerini, not Cerrini. (Go to Article)
New York Times,
newspapers,
errors
Pogue's new blog format - new & improved
A couple of weeks ago, I
commented on David Pogue's blog (see post on May 4). Well, thanks to the tech department at the
Times, there is a new format which is far superior and really improves the reader's experience when reading the
blog. Now all of Pogue's content comes to the forefront, plus the comments are easier to find and read. Good work!
New York Times,
David Pogue,
personal technology
What's in a name? - when interviewing with the WSJ, make sure to give them your business card!
From today's
Wall Street Journal:
Corrections & Amplifications
May 16, 2006; Page A2
FORMER White House lawyer Brett Kavanaugh has been nominated by President Bush for a federal judgeship. A Politics & Economics article yesterday incorrectly gave his first name as Brent.
* * *
DEREK ARMSTRONG is the head of leveraged finance for Asia at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. In some editions yesterday, the World Stock Markets column incorrectly gave his first name as David.
* * *
IN YESTERDAY'S In the Lead column, the last name of George Hansen, chief executive officer of Corporate Lodging Consultants, was misspelled in some instances as Hanson.
Wall Street Journal,
errors
Wishful Thinking Department
From today's Times:
A front-page article on Sunday about the waning of avian flu in Vietnam and Thailand misstated the amount of time since Thailand has had a human case. It has been five months, not "nearly a year." (Go to Article)
ABC secretly celebrates--perhaps rebroadcasting their bird flu movie isn't a pipe dream.
New York Times,
errors
Sometimes the real power isn't visible in the org chart...
From today's
Times:
An article on Friday about a racketeering indictment charging an accused Mafia soldier and several associates in a killing on Staten Island in April 2005 misstated the affiliation of one defendant, Gino Galestro. He was a member of the newspaper delivery drivers' union and was a foreman at The New York Post; he was not an official of the union. (Go to Article)Well, he wasn't an "official" official, anyway.
New York Times,
errors
Ordainment wouldn't have gotten him any closer to God...
From today's
Washington Post:
Correction to This Article (McCain Reconnects With Liberty University)
A May 14 article about Sen. John McCain's speech at Liberty University incorrectly referred to the chairman of Focus on the Family as the Rev. James Dobson. Dobson is not an ordained minister.
He's not a minister, but he plays one on TV.
Washington Post, errors
Newspaper errors, arithmetic category
From today's
Wall Street Journal:
TOYOTA MOTOR CORP. plans to ask for shareholder approval to repurchase shares valued at roughly 200 billion yen, or about $1.8 billion. An article Thursday incorrectly stated that Toyota Motor plans to ask approval to repurchase roughly 200 billion shares.200 billion shares at Toyota's current price of about $56 per share would constitute about fifty times Toyota's entire market cap. Now
that's some financial engineering!
Wall Street Journal,
errors
A Brief Musical Interlude
I was listening to a podcast today where the Times music editor talked to the writer of an article on Bruce Springsteen’s new album of Pete Seeger covers. And I wondered: when did Springsteen become irrelevant to me?
At one time, in my teens and early twenties, from “Darkness On The Edge of Town” through “Nebraska,” his music was vitally important. I caught up quickly with the back catalogue, and listened to him constantly.
I didn’t love “Born In The USA,” perhaps because that was when it seemed that everyone else discovered him.
He got me back with “Tunnel Of Love,” still his best overall album in my view and once again completely in sync with where I was personally headed at that moment (where I was headed for the next ten years, actually).
But then two CDs came out simultaneously in the early 90’s (I’m struggling to remember the titles… yes, yes, “Human Touch” and “Lucky Town”) and I didn’t love them, even though I wanted to. A song or two on each album worked, but the rest didn’t connect with me. He did an MTV Unplugged (in which he plugged in) without the E Street Band. Uninspiring. Those two CDs were the last I bought, except for the live album and the “Tracks” compilation. Now the Seeger album. I won’t be picking that one up either.
It’s not Springsteen’s fault. I changed more than he did. Where I was didn’t intersect with where he was coming from. I loved enough of his music so that I didn’t need any more songs from him.
This happens with every fan and every musician, I suppose. There’s a point at which the relationship ends, or is frozen at a point in time. Ah, well.
music,
Bruce Springsteen
A case of mixing fantasy with reality?
From today's
Times:
"Going to Literary New York," an article on Page 12 of the Travel section today, refers erroneously to Central Park. No part of the park has ever been known as the Great Meadow; the term was used by Walker Percy in his novel "The Last Gentleman." (The park does include the Sheep Meadow and the Great Lawn.) (Go to Article)After exploring the Great Meadow, head for a satisfying lunch at Tavern on the Rink!
New York Times,
New York,
errors
Times writing self-critique
Gawker got a copy of an internal
Times memo on the quality of writing in the paper and published it
here.
It's informative reading for anyone interested in understanding how a news story is put together, if you can persist reading through the jargon and unclear writing (never mind grammatical errors and poor punctuation) in the memo. Some examples:
...A relatively smooth passage would often be interrupted by a thicket of words: a sentence or a paragraph clotted with clauses and qualifications or flabby with excess verbiage, requiring a second (or third) read....
...Of course every day yielded a different front page, a different stew of stories, their aggregate quality sometimes stunningly fine, their aggregate quality sometimes dispiritingly average....
...In the interests of space, Ive focused on criticism, but it goes without saying that nearly every story, including those I might have, or even definitely would have, approached differently, met a high standard. The one story that really left me scratching my head, the Iran nuclear story of this past Sunday (more below) had the mark of too many editors no offense!...
It seems that the editors could show more leadership: the memos show some of the artificial writing for which they criticize the reporters.
Yeah, yeah, I understand. It's an internal memo, not meant for public view. But these are professional writers for the most respected newspaper in the world. If they can't write a clear, correct memo, what hope do the rest of us have?
New York Times,
writing,
journalism
An etymological clarification (near-obscenity division)
From today's
Times:
The Critics' Choice column in The Arts on Monday, about new CD's including one by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, referred imprecisely to the origin of the term "Californication." While the Chili Peppers used "Californication" as the title of a 1999 album, the word "Californicate" dates at least to the 1970's. (Go to Article)Well, that clears that up. But who coined the term "Masshole"?
New York Times,
errors,
music,
slang
Additional pain & suffering: obituary errors #3
From the
Washington Post:
Correction to This Article [obituary of former Times Editor Abe Rosenthal]A version of this obituary that ran in today's print editions incorrectly reported that former New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger was deceased. This version has been corrected.
Washington Post,
errors,
obituaries
Finland part of Scandinavia? Ei!
From today's Times:
An article on Wednesday about what is known as the Nordic Model for economic well-being referred incorrectly to Finland. While it is among the Nordic countries, it is not part of Scandinavia. (
Go to Article)
New York Times,
errors,
Scandinavia
Pogue vs. Mossberg #2
There were no big new product introductions in personal technology this week: both David Pogue of the Times and Walt Mossberg of the Journal presented essays yesterday instead of the typical Thursday product reviews.
Pogue discussed the need (or lack thereof) for a new DVD standard, especially with the war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD muddying the waters for prospective buyers. Mossberg wrote about the back-and-forth market battle between selling components (the Microsoft-Intel-Dell way) vs. end-to-end systems (i.e., Apple).
Fine stuff, but let's hope to learn about some new gadgets next week.
New York Times,
Wall Street Journal,
technology
I'm free and it feels great
Finally back on the Blogger "whitelist" after two days. Whew! More real posts tomorrow.
Still in Blogger spam jail! Get me out!
I received an email from Blogger Support four hours ago letting me know the following:
Hello,Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so thatit will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger andsign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for yourpatience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.Sincerely,Blogger SupportYet I still can't post to my blog without doing word verification. I'm still considered a spam blogger. Aargh! I've replied to the message, but I'd be surprised if that mailbox accepts replies.
Help!
Weblog,
Google,
spam
Google's Rocket Scientists trap lowly blogger!
For the past day and a half, the blog you're reading has been dwelling in blog purgatory. Specifically, Google's spam blog detection software has identified this blog as likely spam, and so its ability to be found by readers has been inhibited by Google.
I first learned of this imprisonment when I saw the word verification box when I was creating a post yesterday morning. Only when I clicked on the adjoining questionmark logo did it explain the spam checking feature and that my blog had been identified as spam (note to Blogger programmers: an email would have been a better notification).
One of the spam triggers, apparently, is a lot of posts linking to the same site. (In my case, that must be the New York Times--I've got to start reading other newspapers!)
I filled in the form requesting that a person review my blog, so it can be verified that it is not, in fact, spam. Blogger claims that most reviews occur within one business day.
Yet here I am today, well into day 2, with my modest blog (number 903,000 on the Technorati importance scale) hobbled till further notice.
Release me, Google rocket scientists!
Weblog,
Google,
spam
More on blind acceptance of online piracy statistics
From today's
Times:
An article in Business Day yesterday about a deal between Warner Brothers and BitTorrent to sell movies and television shows online referred imprecisely to the results of a study commissioned by the Motion Picture Association of America. It found that in 2005, movie studios lost $2.3 billion to online piracy, not to piracy in general. (Go to Article).It's easy to cite this statistic--it's in plain numbers, easy to understand and, of course, large--in the billions of dollars. (Organizations like the MPAA commission these studies so they can arm the press with evidence of the magnitude of the problem--from their viewpoint.) I wish the Times and other papers would analyze these statistics more closely (will someone please reproduce the exhaustive
George Ziemann analysis of online music piracy statistics for movies?). If it turns out that the revenue lost to online piracy is a lot less than $2.3B, it makes it more difficult for the studios and record companies to portray themselves as victims.
Also, online piracy gets all the attention, when selling pirated DVDs when the movie is still in theaters is costing the studios real money.
This op-ed piece from the Times on Saturday illustrates a straightforward, though radical, way for the studios to manage this problem--compress or eliminate the release windows.
New York Times,
errors,
piracy,
movies,
TV
Can you sell a thoroughbred short?
From today's
WSJ:
INVESTORS who sell securities "short" borrow stock, then sell it, betting the stock's price will fall and they will be able to buy the shares back later at a lower price for return to the lender. A page-one article Saturday about a Kentucky Derby fan who is a short seller incorrectly said that borrowing money was part of the process.Borrowing money is, however, typically part of the process of betting on the Kentucky Derby.
Kentucky Derby,
Wall Street Journal,
errors
Upstate all looks the same when you're from the Big Apple
From today's
Times:
A thumbnail map on Sunday with an article about a boycott of the Exxon Mobil stations in Hamburg, N.Y., to protest rising gas prices indicated the location of the town incorrectly. It is south of Buffalo, not north of Syracuse. (Go to Article)Number of errors corrected in the paper today: eight (a high for the month so far).
New York Times,
errors,
geography,
New York
Anyone want to put some money into GM or Ford?
From today's
Wall Street Journal:
Corrections & Amplifications
May 8, 2006; Page A2
THE MARKET IMPLIED probability of default for General Motors Corp. in three years, as compiled by J.P. Morgan, is 51%, while Ford Motor Co.'s default risk in three years is 43%. Based on incorrect information from J.P. Morgan, a Marketplace article Friday gave the GM figure as 34%, making it appear that Ford had a higher default risk than GM.
Oh, boy, I bet this correction makes the Ford people feel a whole lot better.
Wall Street Journal,
errors,
General Motors,
Ford
Favorite Arctic Monkeys songs...
Today being a slow news day, here is a list of my family's favorite songs from the
Arctic Monkeys' fine album,
WHATEVER PEOPLE SAY I AM, THAT's WHAT I'M NOT.
George (age 5) prefers "
The View From the Afternoon"
Charlie (age 3) votes for "
Fake Tales of San Francisco," or, as he calls it, "The Kick Me Out One."
I (age 43) like "
A Certain Romance."
The lyrics are excellent, and worth reading
here, so you can understand them through the noisy guitars and Sheffield accents.
They're a lot more than just hype. They'll be around a while. You can quote me on that!
Arctic Monkeys,
music
Additional pain & suffering: obituary errors #2
From the
Washington Post:
Correction to
This ArticleThe obituary of Joe Holt Anderson in the May 4 edition listed his first name incorrectly. It also gave an incorrect cause of death and date for the year he married his first wife. Mr. Anderson died of complications of lung disease. He married Jeanne Fortier Anderson in 1957. Additionally, the obituary misstated the date of his death. Mr. Anderson died on April 25.
Four mistakes in one obituary, and this gentleman had
worked at one time for the Washington Post! Ouch!
Washington Post,
obituaries
Architecture of Newspapers, part 3
In today's
Times, the paper's ombudsman,
Byron Calame, discusses "enterprise stories."This was the first I'd heard this term, and though he doesn't define it in the article (which would have been helpful for non-journalists), it means stories that begin with proposals from editors, reporters or publicists, rather being inspired by breaking news. Journalism.com provides some helpful context
here.
In his article, Calame surveys an edition of the Sunday Times, and researches the origin of twenty-three enterprise stories (there were two breaking news stories and two columns as well) and is gratified that most of the ideas came from reporters, as opposed to editors (i.e., bottom-up vs. top-down ideas).
He's also happy that only two of the twenty-three enterprise stories came from publicists. That seems like a reasonably low percentage, but I'm curious about something: the stories Calame referenced were all front-page stories. Was the percentage of publicist-generated stories after the front pages higher than this? I'd bet that it was.
The actions of publicists placing stories in the mainstream media is a hidden side of the business I'd like to learn more about. How about that deeper analysis, Mr. Calame?
New York Times,
journalism,
public relations
Bravo to the Wall Street Journal on the options backdating story
Sometimes we complain, and other times we must salute. In March, the
Wall Street Journal published
this lengthy article about the options grants for CEOs of several companies, including
Comverse,
Vitesse Semiconductor,
ACS and
UnitedHealth, coinciding with unusually low price points for their stock. This situation was not the result of mere chance, but most likely of intentional backdating of options to allow the CEO the lowest strike price and, therefore, the most potential for profit.
Rather than relying on anonymous sources, the Journal reporters, Charles Forelle and James Bandler, working with an Iowa professor, Erik Lie, performed an exhaustive analysis of publicly available data to find companies with this unusual pattern of option grants.
The result? A series of investigations into these companies, the resignation of offending CEOs, and a lot more to come. Perhaps the most significant role of the press is to bring situations like this to light, to illuminate a dark corner of the world and bring some accountability there.
Wall Street Journal,
CEO compensation,
options
A powerful illustration of bias through selectivity
I read
this post, from the
Logical Meme blog, on a
Times article about the debate on the emergency spending bill. The blogger decomposes a brief sentence in the article.
The Senate approved a $109 billion measure on Thursday to pay for the war in Iraq and Gulf Coast hurricane recovery, ignoring a veto threat by President Bush and an increasingly hard line against spending by House Republicans.In his analysis, he shows how the simple phrase "to pay for the war in Iraq and Gulf Coast hurricane recovery" omitted some Congressional earmarks which were the focus of the "hard-line-against-spending" Republicans' opposition. These earmarks in some cases have nothing at all to do with Iraq or Katrina, and in another cases are connected in some way but debatable as to their value.
In order to get a fuller picture of the spending bill, Logical Meme has to consult three other sources, the
Washington Post, the AP via
Forbes and the
Marketwatch web site.
A journalist has to make decisions every day about what to include and what not to include. Under deadline pressure, these decisions are made quickly. The urge to reduce and summarize must be immense. In this case, the Times reporter and his editor didn't do their readership any favors by omitting important context.
Good work, Logical Meme.
New York Times,
bias
Snap judgment rendered in column
From a correction in today's
WSJ:
IN 1968, the U.S. Senate was composed of 57 Democrats and 43 Republicans.
A Deja Vu column May 1 incorrectly stated that the Senate then was "Republican dominated."
Here's the passage where that appeared, in an article about the grape-pickers' protests of the 1960's:
The federal government was divided on the boycott: Grapes were sold in the dining room of the Republican-dominated Senate but banished from the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. During the 1968 presidential campaign, Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy endorsed the boycott; Richard Nixon called it "clearly illegal." After he was elected, Mr. Nixon said he would eat California grapes "whenever I can." The Department of Defense, meanwhile, increased its grape purchases by more than 40% in 1969, shipping 2.5 million pounds to troops in Vietnam.
The paragraph had a poetic symmetry about it: the Democrats supported the boycott, the Republicans opposed it. The fact that the Democrats "dominated" the Senate would have been inconvenient to point out here. The truth was more complicated, of course. The Senate was far more conservative than the House in the '60's, even on the Democratic side (of which Southern Democrats were a large component).
This type of knee-jerk assessment would be excusable in the first draft of a column, but not after revision and fact-checking.
Wall Street Journal,
errors,
bias
I'm OK, You're Biased
I've been thinking about this article, "
I'm OK, You're Biased," from the
Times a couple of weeks back. Here are a couple of interesting excerpts:
Research suggests that decision-makers don't realize just how easily and often their objectivity is compromised. The human brain knows many tricks that allow it to consider evidence, weigh facts and still reach precisely the conclusion it favors.......And yet, if decision-makers are more biased than they realize, they are less biased than the rest of us suspect. Research shows that while people underestimate the influence of self-interest on their own judgments and decisions, they overestimate its influence on others.What I've been thinking about is how to apply this thinking to bias in the press. It would imply that reporters' objectivity is compromised more easily than they realize, and that readers overestimate how this bias affects what they read every day.
Sounds like a pretty fair appraisal of the modern press, to my ears.
Objectivity,
Bias,
New York Times
A case of data inconveniently not fitting with the template
From today's
Times:
A chart on Tuesday with an article about Zimbabwe's high inflation rate misstated the reasons for its sharp rise and fall during 2004. The rise was caused by a flight of foreign capital, shortages and a steep increase in the money supply, not by the government's seizure of commercial farms. The fall was caused by a rise in interest rates and an economic slowdown, not by price controls. (Go to Article)This is a strange one. The two original rationales were way off. You wonder: were these hypotheses that the reporter imposed on the data, not bothering to do any research on what the causes might otherwise be?
New York Times,
Errors
Five errors in one obit... a new record
From today's Times:
An obituary on Monday and in late editions on Sunday about the economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith referred incorrectly to his family at several points. He had a younger brother, William, who died several years ago; he was not an only son. A sister, Catherine Denholm, also died several years ago; she was not among his survivors. Mr. Galbraith had 10 grandchildren, not 6. Because of an editing error, the term for his wife's vocation was truncated in some copies. She is a linguist. A caption misstated the date of a photograph of the Galbraiths taken at their home in New Delhi while he was an ambassador. It was in 1956, not 1966. (
Go to Article)
This is like having a sack, a fumble and an interception on the same play--it's hard to even imagine how this many factual errors could occur in one article. I'll bet there were some pretty steamed Galbraiths after reading this.
New York TimesErrorsObituaries
WSJ reporter ends Cold War?
Was anyone else disturbed by this tribute to the late George Melloan (search for "Melloan's Work"
here) that appeared on the WSJ editorial page last week? It's meant in jest, I think, but comparing Melloan's contributions to ending the Communist era with Reagan's and Gorbachev's, even jokingly, raises questions of the Journal's perspective.
An editorial writer and columnist can be a powerful person. He/she can have a lot of influence. But comparing that influence with world leaders shows a distorted worldview, with the Fourth Estate overvaluing its own importance. Would any ordinary citizen presented with these facts make the same comparison? Don't think so.
Tip of the hat for honoring a late colleague.
Wag of the finger to hyperbole of this sort.
Wall Street JournalEditorials
Dueling Tech Columnists - Pogue vs. Mossberg
It's Thursday, and that means both the
Times and
Journal have their techie hats on. The recently downsized (it's happening everywhere) Circuits section features the columns of David Pogue, and the Journal's Personal Technology column is written as always by
Walter Mossberg. Today they're both reviewing the Samsung Q1, the first Windows Ultra-mobile PC (fka Origami).
So who's better? Pogue is funnier, and his video columns are quite entertaining (find some
here) on uniting Mac and Windows, pre-Boot Camp). Mossberg is more businesslike. They both take things from the layman's perspective (though as laymen they're very experienced). Pogue has a
blog, which I find a bit light (much of the material is contributed by readers).
Their newspapers feature them prominently. Mossberg also does the Tech Q&A column and has a regular feature entitled "The Mossberg Solution" in the Personal Journal section. They are both valuable brands for their newspapers. (I read somewhere, and I'll be damned if I can find the reference, that Mossberg is one of the highest-paid employees at the Journal. That says something about the economic value of features vs. news, doesn't it?)
If I have to pick one, it's Mossberg. The tiebreaker is his yearly home PC buyer's guide. That's the single most valuable column I read in a year.
New York TimesWall Street JournalTechnologyDavid PogueWalt Mossberg
On Leaks
The Times had an interesting article on leaks this past Sunday. Without the unauthorized release of confidential or classified information, many important stories would not have come to light. Watergate and the recent domestic wiretapping program, to name two.
These stories may be the most valuable single reason the newspapers exist, though these types of stories take up five percent (less even?) of a typical newspaper. They're on page 1, or the National section, or occasionally the Business section. Without these stories being uncovered, the government or corporations have one fewer check on their power, and the citizenry has one fewer tool to manage these institutions.
At the same time, leaks have significant problems.
One, they're anonymous. Without being publicly cited, the reader has no ability to assess the credibility of the source. He/she is completely at the mercy of the reporter (who has reason to be credulous) and the editor--who's supposed to be the conscience of the reader but who is human too and can overlook conflicts and biases inherent in anonymous sourcing; e.g., Judith Miller.
Two, the leaker leaks for a reason, and not at random. It's dangerous to leak--certainly against the policies and practices of an organization, even illegal in some cases. Thus no one would do it without a compelling reason. Perhaps the leaker is looking to curry favor with the reporter for future use, perhaps to exact revenge on an enemy (hello Scooter Libby). Perhaps even to serve higher moral or ethical purposes.
The problem is that none of these motives is apparent to the reader. And without knowledge of these motives, the reader cannot make an independent judgment of whether the information is distorted, spun, or even untrue.
Ah, well. We need them, but don't really like them. I guess that's the point of the article.
New York TimesScooter Libbybiasleaksanonymous sources
The Times weighs in on the impact of music piracy on revenues
In their
article on today's EMI-Warner Music developments, the Times hedges a bit on the impact of music piracy:
Record companies have been scrambling to secure footing in the digital market as they suffer a lengthy slump in CD sales, in part because of continuing piracy of music.Nonetheless, they still feature unchallenged that standard explanation from the RIAA. No other explanation is cited. Therefore, the reader is left with the impression that piracy is the single largest factor in the slump in CD sales.
New York TimesMusic PiracyBiasNewspapers
Accepting music industry propaganda at face value
From today's online Wall Street Journal
article on EMI Music's bid for Warner Music:
Like other players in the global music industry, EMI's sales have been hit by rampant music piracy in recent years. In response, Chairman Eric Nicoli has been cutting costs.This statement, blandly inserted into the middle of the article, asserts that music piracy is responsible for reduced revenues in the music industry. The industry itself believes so--see
this statement on piracy from the Recording Industry Association of America (see especially their grim and very broad view of "online piracy." Based on this, we may
all be pirates!).
But there's nowhere near consensus on this topic. Here's
one dissenting opinion.
The uncritical acceptance of an explanation from someone who's clearly biased (an industry association? if they're not biased, they're not doing their jobs!) while not discussing alternate explanations for the revenue drop (weak product, reduction of artists' rosters through consolidation, etc.) is one way bias creeps into the "objective" media.
Wall Street JournalMusic PiracyBiasNewspapers
Architecture of Newspapers: part 2
Yesterday I talked about features. Another important part of a newspaper is the opinions/editorials (Op-Ed) page. This is the place in the paper where the editors, columnists and readers express their opinions. The Op-Ed page in a newspaper is usually well-identified, often in the third- and second-to-last pages of the first section (tabloids like the New York
Daily News and
New York Post don't identify them very clearly).
The
Wall Street Journal is an illustrative example. From the front page through the rest of section A, you read about political decisions, economic issues, merger news, etc. Then, you reach the Op-Ed page.
All of a sudden, you are reading a different newspaper. Intensely right-wing, haters of Clintons of all genders, pro-business, anti-regulation. The WSJ Op-Ed page is clearly identifiable from 100 yards.
Op-Ed is also where the high-profile columnists live. For the
Times, that includes brand names like Safire, Kristof, Friedmann, Dowd, etc. For smaller newspapers, it's where the syndicated names crop up.
The
Times recently made a statement about how they perceive readers see value in the paper. When they created
TimesSelect, the paid part of their site, the first content to be put behind the walled garden were the columns of the poeple mentioned above. (Access to crosswords, of course, has cost money for a long time.)
News is still free.
New York TimesWall Street JournalNewspapers
Stephen Colbert and the White House Correspondents' Dinner
So, we're reading that there were
mixed reactions to Stephen Colbert's performance Saturday night, all over the "
blogosphere." He's not for everyone, that's for sure. I laughed a ton and agreed with most that he had a lot of guts to stand up there and be hard on everyone there. (It was also priceless to hear
Jon Stewart refer to this event as the "consummation of the loveless marriage" between the White House and the press.)
If I'm Colbert and Comedy Central, this kind of reaction means I did exactly the right thing. Go Stephen!
PoliticsTelevisionStephen ColbertJon Stewartnew york times
How much does Reading Railroad cost again?
From today's
Times:
An article on Friday about Hasbro's decision to eliminate Atlantic City as the setting of its flagship version of Monopoly misstated the cost of putting a hotel on Ventnor Avenue and referred imprecisely to another property, Marvin Gardens. A hotel on Ventnor costs $750 ($150 each for four houses and another $150 for the hotel), not $400. Marvin Gardens was the final property created by Charles B. Darrow, the man who devised the game for Parker Brothers in the 1930's; the final space on the board is Boardwalk. The article also misspelled the name of the neighborhood in Margate City, N.J., that inspired Marvin Gardens. It is Marven Gardens, not Marvyn. (
Go to Article)
Perhaps the writers and editors are rushing a bit, put off stride by the pressures of needing to update web sites with new content throughout the day, but two of the primary errors listed here (out of the no fewer than
four errors total!) could have been avoided by merely looking at the game board.
GamesMonopolyNewspapersCorrectionsnew york times
Architecture of Newspapers: part 1
It is not readily apparent to most newspaper readers that there is a specific architecture underlying a newspaper. News, features and opinion/editorial are three key components of this architecture. Understanding how these three components differ is important because editors often refer to them when discussing objectivity in the news. Let's talk about Features.
Feature Articles (from
teachwriting.com):
What is a feature article?
Feature articles and editorials are two of the most prominent genres of writing in newspapers and magazines today. Almost every article you read in a magazine is a feature article whether it is written about which make-up to buy or how to help your child in school. Feature Articles are everywhere.
While there is no specific definition to be found in a dictionary or listing of journalistic terms, a feature article can be defined by its features:
Feature articles can be written at any time or at a specific time of the year such as seasons or holidays. In other words they are not front page news stories.
Authors who write feature articles write about topics they are familiar with or topics that grab their interest.
So, from above. Features are not news. They are not about current events. An article saying there was a traffic jam yesterday that caused delays commuting into Harrisburg is news. A review of a GPS device that helps you avoid traffic jams is a feature. While they are "written with factual information," they may very well have a strong point of view (e.g., a subtext of "Microsoft is arrogant and technically behind the curve!" in a
review of an updated web browser).
When editors say journalists are objective, they don't mean when journalists are writing feature articles.
Anyone got a better definition for this term? Send it on!
Wikipedia is incredibly useful
I've been thinking about the spat between
Nature and the
Encyclopedia Britannica regarding
Nature's assertion that the accuracy of
Brittanica and
Wikipedia is comparable. The article that started it all is
here.
The argument is which is more authoritative: the "
wisdom of crowds" approach of Wikipedia or the "expert" approach of Britannica.
What's not emphasized is the biggest difference between the two sources. Wikipedia has many times more articles than Britannica. An example: I was listening to a podcast featuring
Mark Gardener, formerly of the group Ride (ever heard of them?).
In their Wikipedia entry, Ride music was described as a "shoegazing band." What's that? I thought. Of course, there was a
Wikipedia entry for that too.
MusicWikipedianew york times
Airbus' reaction - it's crap!
Here is
Airbus' denial of the
Times story. Bookmark this page! Check back often to see who said this when, finally, Airbus unveils the "cattle-car A380" with inches of legroom!
airbus
More plaudits for standing room in coach!
This is some evidence of the
feedback Airbus has received on their standing-room idea.
airbus
Standing-room only on plane trips: a bad idea
If you saw last Tuesday's
Times, the front-page article on Airbus' proposal of "standing-room" seating as a way to cram more people onto airplanes was really weird and fun, showing how twisted corporations can be when trying to serve their customers. It turns out, at least according to Airbus, to be incorrect. See below:
A front-page article last Tuesday about seating options that airlines are considering to accommodate more passengers in economy class referred incorrectly to the concept of carrying passengers standing up with harnesses holding them in position. During preparation of the article, The Times's questions to one aircraft manufacturer, Airbus, were imprecise. The company now says that while it researched that idea in 2003, it has since abandoned it. The article also misstated the capacity of the Airbus A380 superjumbo jet. The airliner can accommodate 853 passengers in regular seats; standing-room positions would not be needed. (Go to Article)Now, reading this correction, it's not at all clear whether the reporter's imprecise questions were the problem, or whether an avalanche of negative PR caused Airbus to run away from this idea. You decide.
TravelNewspapersCorrectionsairbusnew york times
Marblehead is really into organic lawn care
From today's
Wall Street Journal:
MARBLEHEAD, MASS., recently converted 15 acres of athletic fields to organic care.
An article in the April 15 Pursuits section on organic lawn care incorrectly said Marblehead had converted 15,000 acres to organic care.
The entire area of Marblehead is 2,560 acres. It took a computer and about 90 seconds to verify this. Didn't anyone on the editorial staff do this simple assessment?
Was there a ballgame today?
Again, from today's
Times:
A sports article on Saturday about the Mets' 5-2 victory over the Atlanta Braves referred incorrectly in some copies to details about the game. For Atlanta, Chipper Jones hit a home run in the sixth inning, not the seventh, and Jeff Francoeur, not Pete Orr, was thrown out trying to steal second base in the seventh inning. Mets pitcher Pedro Martínez retired the first seven hitters he faced, not the first eight. (
Go to Article)
The reporter was probably working so hard to overcome word processing malfunctions that he forgot to watch the ballgame!
SportsNewspapersCorrections
Attack of the Killer Spellchecker! part 2
From today's
Times:Because of a word processing malfunction, an article on April 21 about the Afghan parliament's endorsement of 20 of the 25 proposed cabinet ministers misstated the name of a deputy from Kabul who forecast further discussion of three of them. The deputy is Kabir Ranjbar, not Caber Ran bar. (
Go to Article)
Go ahead, blame it on the computer.
