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   Public Appears to Shrug Off Reporter's Misdeeds

MEDIA FOOTNOTE:

Public Appears to Shrug Off Reporter’s Misdeeds

A summary of an LA Times story
by the Society of Professional Journalists

“Carol Klingel had to chuckle. The New York Times was reporting—on the front page, no less—that her son, a Marine scout who had been wounded in Iraq, struggled with flashbacks, “his mind wandering from images of his girlfriend back in Ohio to the sight of an exploding fireball.”

“The story was wrenching. It was also wrong. For starters, Lance Cpl. James Klingel didn't have a girlfriend. He had broken up with his most recent sweetheart before he was deployed to the Gulf. “We were laughing about it. I kept asking him, which girl would be thinking that she was the girl mentioned in the story,” his mom said.

“The Klingels knew that reporter Jayson Blair had gotten the facts wrong. But they didn't call the New York Times to complain. They didn't write to demand a correction.

“In a telling sign of how little Americans seem to trust the press, many of the people Blair wrote falsely about in the last seven months shrugged off his mistakes as more examples of sloppy, melodramatic reporting. Some protested strenuously, demanding corrections, only to give up in frustration....”

Source: Los Angeles Times. Read the whole sorry story here.

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This story was published on June 4, 2003.
   
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