OT: Errors in Reporting

[Kathleen E. Miller]

At 11:28 PM 3/24/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>On Thu, 6 May 1999, David Bergdahl wrote:
>
> > Barry is a judge, so he doesn't meet j-school students as we do: clearly
> > he is overestimating both the intelligence and the training of reporters.
>
>I don't think anyone who has dealt with reporters overestimates their
>intelligence, training, or accuracy.  A couple of weeks ago the New York
>Times printed an article about the origins of the expression "When did you
>stop beating your wife?"  They interviewed me for the article, but
>referred to me throughout the piece as "Fred Siegel."  The reporter later
>told me that she knew someone named Fred Siegel, and her mind just
>conflated the two people.
>
>Given the many inaccuracies one sees in the Times when they write about
>something of which one has personal knowledge, one can only assume that
>all their reporting is riddled with errors.


Now that I am no longer the research assistant (Elizabeth Phillips will be
back starting Tuesday), I have a little more perspective on this issue. I
now have an anal retentive A-Type personality fact-checker AND a copy
editor calling me on Safire's column every week. The last one argued with
me until she was blue in the face that the root of yotta had to be Latin
based on AHD4, and M-W's "perhaps alteration of Italian otto eight" was
just plain wrong  "cause Italian, as you know, comes from the Latin and
therefore....." And I pointed out that the Latin for eight comes from the
Greek for eight and she might as well just go all the way back and says
it's all Greek like Random House does. I swear she was pounding her foot on
the floor screaming "Latin, Latin Latin." It went is as Latin and there was
nothing I could do about it.

They've got time to do that since the magazine is on a 16 day lead time.
The regular news is basically just edited for syntax and grammar, so you
basically just have to trust the reporter.

On an aside - a new clerk came in the other day. She's writing her
dissertation. At the coffee machines we came to a startling conclusion.
Every single one of the people who are supporting the paper and making very
little money doing so- research assistants, clerks, file clerks,
secretaries etc. has an advanced degree. Not a single one of us with less
than a masters. Can't say the same for those who are writing it, unfortunately.

Wonder what that fact-checker has her MA in?

Kathleen E. Miller
In limbo at the Times