At 81, clear-eyed and calm, America's most beloved ex-president — who yesterday sanctified the Palestinian election as head of the 950-strong international observer mission — took the earthquake in stride.
When I questioned the competency of the managing editors I was being purely rhetorical never realizing the creation of that little dittie lay with the editor and not the writer. If you follow the link for yesterday for the Toronto Star column the sentence now reads:
At 81, clear eyed and calm, the former U.S. president — who yesterday sanctified the Palestinian election as head of the 950-strong international observer mission — took the earthquake in stride.
Apparently, Lucianne made hay yesterday in the life of Mitch Potter causing him to send this email to the editors of Lucianne:
I wrote the Jimmy Carter interview currently on your home page.
Please let the record show that:
I wrote:
"At 81, clear eyed and calm, the former U.S. president who yesterday sanctified the process as head of the 950-strong international observer mission took the earthquake in stride."
But my newspaper published:
"At 81, clear-eyed and calm, America's most beloved ex-president — who yesterday sanctified the Palestinian election as head of the 950-strong international observer mission — took the earthquake in stride."
I did not, repeat not, use the word "beloved" in my original file. Carter was a one-term president, after all, and America's overall disinterest in his continuing work is obvious. The reference was added by an editor in Toronto without my knowledge. And a thorough thrashing has ensued.
Please, everyone, redirect your rage and ridicule. If you must resort to personal insults, base it on something I actually said.
Er ... that's all.
Mitch Potter
Middle East Bureau Chief
Toronto Star of Canada
001 416 367 2000
mpotter@thestar.ca
But not only did Potter get in the Lucianne act, his so did the Toronto Star’s Deputy Foreign Editor:
Lucianne,
The words "beloved ex-president" were added to Mitch Potter's copy during editing.
I realize Jimmy Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is a polarizing figure.
Nevertheless, personal attacks -- flaming -- on our writers are unwarranted.
Desist, please.
Peter Martyn
Deputy Foreign Editor
The Toronto Star
So the Toronto Star corrected the online column but made no public acknowledgement that its editorial staff took liberties with their reporter’s copy in the correction section.
I suspect the silence on this kind of backdoor shenanigan from the Toronto Star’s media critic will be positively deafening.
1 comment:
Well, I'll take your words at face value but I think that this is one area the bloggers really need to address.
We are big on picking apart what the msm journalists are writing that makes it way into our view in either print or online but as the Potter case illustrates some bile must be spewed onto the managing editors who are often given a free pass by the public and bloggers at large.
Never being a journalism major, I had assumed (abeit falsely it appears) that an editor would fact check, clean up the grammar and delete copy for clarity or libelous intent. I never presumed that editors would deliberately modify copy to 'enhance' the descriptive value of copy.
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