Posted by Eugene Volokh:
<i>Slate</i> Corrections:
To its credit, Slate today published, in its Corrections e-column, the
following:
A "Bushism of the Day" item posted on Feb, 10 reported that
President Bush said on Sept. 23, 2004, "Listen, the other day I was
asked about the National Intelligence Estimate, which is a National
Intelligence Estimate." Though this is the version reported in
several transcripts, an audiotape of the speech makes clear that
Bush's more coherent actual words were, "Listen, the other day I
was asked about the NIE, which is a National Intelligence
Estimate."
It's to Slate's credit that it promptly published the correction. Yet
I wonder: Given the way Slate is organized -- and the same goes for
some other online journals -- wouldn't it be better to post a
correction in the same e-column (which is to say under the rubric on
the front screen) as the error appeared?
The front screen naturally doesn't indicate exactly what the
corrections are. I suspect that many readers don't normally read the
Corrections section. So as a result many readers who do habitually
read the Bushisms column, and who read yesterday's column, will never
learn that what they were told yesterday wasn't actually so.
Am I mistaken? I realize that newspaper tradition is to segregate
corrections in a special corrections section. I'm not sure that's
right even for print newspapers, but does it really make sense online?
Or is it the case that lots of people do read the Corrections section,
and that the best way to reach Bushism readers -- again, to un-mislead
them -- is through an entry in Corrections, rather than a new entry in
Bushisms?
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