Misrepresented? And how!

“Misrepresented” is journalese for “Boy! Did we screw up!” And blaming it on an “editorial error” is pure fantasy since newspapers no longer have copy editors who do any editing. Here’s a beautiful example in a correction in the Boston Globe, Oct. 24, 2018: “Because of an editing error, a caption in This Day in History in the Boston Sunday Globe misrepresented the history of the USS Constitution. The vessel in the picture, berthed in Charlestown, is the original Navy frigate, launched in Boston harbor in 1797. The Globe regrets the error.”

Of course, the Globe is too embarrassed to repeat that the caption said that the ship pictured was a replica of the Constitution. A replica!!!! Good grief, anyone who has lived in Boston for a month should know the ship is the original, a U.S. Navy ship, the world’s oldest floating commissioned naval vessel, which built to fight the Barbary pirates of North Africa and later victorious over British warships in the war of 1812, in battles where it won the nickname “Old Ironsides.”

File under: Editing errors? Yeah sure.

+++
www.JournaleseDictionary.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *