Correction in the New York Times

"Because of an editing error, an article on Monday about the shooting death on Sunday in Beirut, Lebanon, of a protester apparently in a clash between supporters and opponents of Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite Muslim organization, referred incorrectly to Ahmad al-As’ad, the protest’s organizer. Mr. As’ad is the son of a former speaker of the Lebanese Parliament; he has not held that post himself."  I really have better things to do than to point out daily the errors, mistakes, and fallacies of New York Times reporting on the Middle East.  But those mistakes are daily which cast doubt on the reliability and veracity of the information contained in the reports.  I mean, Anne Barnard, the Beirut Bureau chief, sat down with `Abdul-Rahim Murad and identified him as a "member of parliament" which the man has not held that position since 2005.  This is a major mistake.  Imagine of the correspondent of Le Monde in Washington, DC were to interview Bob Dole and introduce him as a member of the Senate.  Would that no be grounds for disqualification of the correspondent and even dismissal?  Worse, notice the language of the correction.  Just as when they claimed that Bashshar refers to his foes as "Sunni extremist", when he never ever used that language.  They post a correction but they are too arrogant to simply admit that they have erred.  Instead, they employ a lawyerly Clintonian language that basically implies that they were really not true.  Notice that they claim that the mistake was due to an "editing error".  What does an editing error mean here? Imagine if our students start claiming that they really were not wrong in certain factual answers but that they erred due to "editing errors".  And notice that the correction ends by saying that Mr. Al-As`ad "has not held that post himself", implying that because his father held that post, the error was actually logical and understandable.  So if I claim that the son of a Nobel Laureate in chemistry had won the prize, it would be merely an editing error because the father (or mother) had won the prize.  Please go play in Central Park.