Tuesday
(8)The Australian is a national broadsheet newspaper published by Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd, and in terms of quality and direction is fairly similar to the British Times. I suppose. Like any paper it makes the odd mistake, and has to publish a correction. On Tuesday it published the following.
A story headlined 'Syria seeks our help to woo US' in Saturday's Weekend Australian misquoted National Party senator Sandy Macdonald. The quote stated: "Syria is a country that has been a bastard state for nearly 40 years" but should have read "Syria is a country that has been a Baathist state for nearly 40 years." The Australian regrets any embarrassment caused by the error.
Personally I think that if anyone is embarrassed by this, there is absolutely no need for regret whatsoever. But that may be just me.
(Thanks to crikey.com.au for pointing this out).
That was an error? I thought they were reporting the truth. Well surprises for everyone.
Posted by Mashiki at March 30, 2004 10:37 PM
As Tim Blair says, it would have been nice if they'd explained the difference.
Posted by Rand Simberg at March 31, 2004 01:10 AM
Good think they weren't trying to say it was one quaint state. No telling how badly that might have gone.
Posted by Al Maviva at March 31, 2004 01:53 AM
Not often a paper makes a Freudian slip!
That's because Freudians have exceptional balance...
Posted by triticale at March 31, 2004 03:34 AM
Gor blimey, mate, those accents'll get you every time. (Pronounced something like "toime".)
Posted by Mike at March 31, 2004 04:06 AM
The reporter must have been using a speech recognition application. The physicians I work for use speech recognition for medical reports, and some of them hate it.
Posted by Chet at March 31, 2004 04:39 AM
Chet, I met one of your doctors once. I asked for "a free bottle in front of me", instead got "a pre-frontal lobotomy" and now tape John Kerry speeches for the content.
Posted by Buddy Larsen at March 31, 2004 05:40 AM
Recently, I was watching a noontime TV news report out of Boston, and they announced that, after the commercial, they were going to cover a story about vandalism at a native American temple.
We stared at each other. A native American temple? What the heck is that?! A giant bark-covered teepee or something?
After the break, they came back to a story...about an obviously Hindu temple.
Ohhhhhh. Hahaha. Light dawns. I wonder if that was an automated substitution, or if there was a supremely ignorant monkey working the teleprompter that day.
Posted by S. Weasel at March 31, 2004 01:41 PM
Very funny. I smell a spell-check correction here....
Posted by Sylvain Galineau at March 31, 2004 01:56 PM
A Freudian slip?
Isn't that where you mean to say one thing, but say your mother?
Posted by Rich at March 31, 2004 04:05 PM
Bastard state! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAHHAHAHA!
Indian/Native American temple! HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!
Much humor.
Posted by Todd at March 31, 2004 04:06 PM
In 1958 the syrians (spit) tried to start a socialist revolution in Lebanon. The RL gov't knew that tehy couldn't go it alone. The french would not help. They asked the US.
And the marines showed up. Scared the little pinkos, i guess. they drew on the large number of arab immigrants in their ranks, and had a large number of arabic speakers. Many of them availed themselves of visiting family.
It took the syrians (spit) 15 years to make their way back in, and only then during the civil war.
Posted by Joe at March 31, 2004 06:09 PM
who do you think got fired for that little mistake? or perhaps it was a prank?
Posted by mary beth at March 31, 2004 11:41 PM
No one should take offense?
What about the poor bastards who don't deserve to be associated with Syria?
Posted by Eric the .5b at April 1, 2004 03:58 AM
