Times issues a correction (barely)

It’s common knowledge that a correction run in a newspaper never catches up to the original error. Especially when the correction is coerced, late, and grudgingly written.

The New York Times has issued such a correction.

Five weeks after they were notified by a LifeSiteNews.com article that they had made a grave error in reporting on abortion in El Salvador, and one week after the paper’s ombudsman published his corroboration of the LifeSiteNews.com evidence, the New York Times has issued a correction.  On Sunday, the New York Times magazine issued an editor’s note admitting at least one of the errors in an April 9 story.

It was a whopping error, and it shaded the entire magazine cover story. It claimed falsely that some women in El Salvador were imprisoned for having abortions.

The emotionally laden piece published by the magazine carried a photo of a young woman in prison by the name of Carmen Climaco.  The caption stated she “was given 30 years for an abortion that was ruled a homicide.”

But it turns out it was a homicide, and the report was easily obtained by LifeSiteNews, though the NYTimes reporter never even tried to get it.

LifeSiteNews published the full court ruling in the case which showed that rather than being jailed for a clandestine abortion – as the Times magazine asserted – the case study cited actually concerned infanticide of a full-term baby.

The background on this fiasco is here and here, and you should read it before continuing here. Because after being caught in so grand and sweeping a scheme to raise sympathy and funds for abortion advocates, this was all the Times could muster as a ‘correction.’ 

An article in The Times Magazine on April 9 reported on the effects of laws that make all abortions illegal in El Salvador. One case the article described was that of Carmen Climaco, who is serving a 30-year prison sentence in El Salvador.

As mentioned above, the article portrayed Climaco as serving the prison sentence for having an abortion. But even the first line of this ‘correction’ still implies that. Never mind that Times editors have the reports on Climaco’s case that reveal the truth. Reports that expose the irresponsibility of the freelance writer who did the abortion article. They stumble through this admission as dismissively as they can.

The three-judge panel that received the case from Judge Sanabria concluded that the second report was more credible than the first, and the panel convicted Ms. Climaco of aggravated homicide.

They cast this woman in a sympathetic light in the original piece for being imprisoned for abortion. It was actually “aggravated homicide.”

The Times should have obtained the text of the ruling of the three-judge panel before the article was published, but did not vigorously pursue the document until details of the ruling were brought to the attention of editors in late November.

That’s stunning, when you think about it. And you should think about it.

Now look at how the Times wraps this up.

A picture caption with the article also misstated the facts of the ruling. Ms. Climaco was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a case that was initially thought to be an abortion but was later ruled to be a homicide; she was not given 30 years in prison for an abortion that was ruled a homicide.

That wording is clumsy. The caption originally stated Climaco “was given 30 years for an abortion that was ruled a homicide.” The qualifier here — that she “was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a case that was initially thought to be an abortion” — is a clear sign of the Times’ bias and spin.