Category Archives: American history

Errors by NPR, Part 1

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On February 8, 2021, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell said that he said, “It was last March, remember, when a senior House Democrat called this disaster, quote, a ‘tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.’”

However, subsequently, on February 25 of the same year, misidentifying Mcconnell as Majority Leader, Kelsey Snell of NPR said

SNELL: … Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of taking advantage of their new power in Washington to make good on a plan to turn pandemic relief into an extremely expensive liberal wish list.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MITCH MCCONNELL: It was last March, remember, when a senior House Democrat called this disaster, quote, “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”

That is not true. Chuck Schumer was the majority leader in February of 2021, not Mcconnell.

Regarding another story, in 2017, NPR stated: “A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Rep. Kevin McCarthy as the House minority leader. He is the majority leader.”

NPR claims that it corrects “significant errors.” So, if misidentifying a congressman is significant, then doing so regarding a senator is more significant and a correction is warranted.

The false statement about the senate was heard on NPR’s “Morning Edition” as hosted by Noel King. Kelley L. Dickens is Supervising Editor of the program. Managing Editor for Standards and Practices at NPR is Tony Cavin. #2102V

Alchemy

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This is either very clever, or evidence of serial incompetence.

The Associated Press (a noun used for lack of a name of one person) writes, “Maria has been placed in temporary care since last week after authorities raided a Roma settlement in central Greece and later discovered that girl was not the child of the couple she was living were not her parents.”

That confounding string of words that looks like a sentence is repeated by the Christian Science Monitor (10/25), Huffington Post (10/25, 10:16 AM), Los Angeles Times (7:53 AM), Time, Yahoo and countless other new outlets.

And Youtube.

Since no author is identified, here is the name of the “Senior Vice President – Executive Editor” of the AP: Kathleen Carroll. Perhaps she signed-off on the article.

The gobledygook is also on the website of the AP, itself (10:16 AM ET). It occurs on pages in the domain hosted2.ap.org, which have newspapers’ names at the top of each.

However, an item with some identical sentences as the first item, on hosted.ap.org, states: “Maria has been placed in temporary care since last week after authorities raided a Roma settlement in central Greece and later discovered that girl was not the child of a Greek Roma couple she was living with.” (10:40 AM EDT)

Astoundingly (as it comes after the nonsense in the first article) the next word string is “The couple has been arrested, and who have been charged for allegedly abducting Maria and document fraud.”

That story contains a by-line, and its gibberish is repeated by the Washington Post, Fox News, CBS and the Times of Mumbai. There are no corrections (or “correctives“) associated with those items on the AP’s correction page.

The news agency also maintains a story, dated June, 2012, that simultaneously identifies (impossibly so) both Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as the U.S. Senate majority leader.

A record of American history by the Senate indicates that only Senator Reid is Majority Leader of that body. The Onion identifies Senator McConnell as “Senate Minority Leader” (emphasis added).

Meanwhile, another inaccurate AP story, on Yahoo, falsely gives Senator McConnell the title, “Senate Majority Leader.” Unlike gibberish or a misspelled name, that is an error of fact.