'NY Times' Retracts John Roberts Memo Story

—‘NY Times’ Retracts John Roberts Memo Story  (Editor & Publisher)

So the paper publishes false information, in a story about a memo critiquing a court case involving a newspaper that published false information. The court case ruled that a newspaper could only be found libelous if the paper published the false information with actual malice. The New York Times said that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts authored the memo, which criticized the ruling. But now the Times has retracted the authorship claim.

That’s a lot of dots. Connect them and they spell “irony.”

Newspapers make mistakes all the time. Kudos to the NYT for publishing its retraction in appoximately the same location as the orignial mistake (rather than leaving it buried in a back page). And to all the editors of the world who are struggling to put all this stuff in order, without reducing it to the point where it looks like a conspiracy.