NYT MAKES A QUIET CORRECTION

FOR THE RECORD (TNR)
There's a coy correction in Saturday's "For the Record" space of the Times, the first of seven such notes. It begins, "Because of an editing error..." and deals with mistakes in an article about Tony Blair's agenda as Middle East envoy of the Quartet. Specifically, the two errors concerned the statistics of Palestinian refugees and when they became refugees.

Apparently, the original errors exaggerated the refugee totals: the article said "millions," not, as was the case, "about 700,000;" and the timing of their departure, not afterward, but before and during the war. Please read the Tuesday Times for the offending article. But you can't find the errors. They've been shaved from the record, alas.

Now, the initial article was written by Isabel Kershner, a splendid recent addition to the Times Jerusalem bureau. Frankly, I can't conceive of Kershner making these errors. If there's anything she knows cold, it's the Palestinians and their predicament. So probably, the "For the Record" item was entirely honest: "due to an editing error..." This means that an ignoramus was doing the editing. And that the fact checkers, well, they were the distorters.