New York Times publishes correction... 48 years late

[RamboLiberal]

Source: Times Online

No one can accuse The New York Times of papering over its mistakes. America's most famous newspaper today issued a formal correction to a review of a Broadway production of West Side Story published no less than 48 years ago.

In a further sign of just how seriously the newspaper takes its role as a newspaper of record, the "Gray Lady" also confessed that it had wrongly described John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, as a "former fighter pilot" in numerous stories over the past decade.

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Also today, The Times came clean on having referred to Senator McCain as a Vietnam-era "fighter pilot" when in fact he was shot down while at the controls of an A-4 Skyhawk - technically an attack aircraft rather than a fighter.

The distinction was mocked by the New York gossip blog Gawker, which pointed out that the Navy fighter pilot school known as Top Gun used the A-4 to simulate Russian MiG fighters and the aircraft effectively met all the main criteria for a fighter - speed, manouevrability and the ability to shoot down other craft - even if its primary role was as an attack bomber.


Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4514049.ece

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Gawker retort:

Times Retracts 12 Years Of Calling McCain 'Fighter Pilot'

The Times published two amazing corrections this morning, starting with one stating that the newspaper had erroneously called Republican presidential candidate John McCain a "fighter pilot" on Sunday and in "numerous other Times articles the past dozen years." Wow, a correction that spans more than a decade! When McCain was famously shot down over Vietnam, he was flying his usual plane, a small jet aircraft known as the A-4 Skyhawk, which the Times now refers to as an "attack aircraft." That's a safe and widely-agreed upon label for the plane pilots dubbed "Scooter" (heh), but the newspaper needn't have apologized for calling it a "fighter." Many in the aviation community regard it as precisely that, starting with the military's most famous training program, Top Gun.

Top Gun, the nickname for the Navy fighter pilot school made famous in the Tom Cruise movie of the same name, originally used the A-4 to simulate Russian MiGs. The key attribute for a "fighter," according to widely recognized definitions, is high speed and maneuverability and weapons designed to shoot down enemy aircraft.

The A-4 proved itself fast and maneuverable at Top Gun, as well as in the service of the Navy's Blue Angels precision-flying team, but in neither of those cases did the aircraft carry any weapons. But it was built to do so. All versions of the aircraft can carry Sidewinder air-to-air missiles for self defense, according to Bill Gunston and Mike Spick's excellent "Modern Air Combat." And they often did, for example in the service of the Israeli Air Force, where an A-4 shot down a Syrian MiG-17 during the Yom Kippur war. Boom, fighter!

The authoritative Jane's military book series calls the A-4 an "attack bomber" in its "Encyclopedia Of Aviation" while Gunston and Spick call it a "versatile little attack bomber."

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The Times should not be so easily cowed, particularly when 12 years worth of coverage is at stake. The newspaper no doubt did its own investigation, and "attack aircraft" is a more appropriate term for the A-4 than "fighter" — it's not the "F-4" after all — but there's no need to backtrack from using a perfectly accurate alternative name.

http://gawker.com/5035890/times-retracts-12-years-of-calling-mccain-fighter-pilot

[TomInTib]

1. Screw Gawker. Who was McCain "fighting"?

The NV Air Force?

He was doing bombing runs when he got racked.

"Fighting" the innocent civilians - old men, women and children.

[asksam]

9. That's what he admitted to...

... being a war criminal and bombing women and children.

[sofa king]

2. It's the use of the aircraft that makes it and the pilot what they are.

If McCain had been in the Air Force flying F-105s, with the "F" clearly designating the plane's intended role as a fighter, they still would have been wrong to call him a fighter pilot because in Vietnam the F-105s were used primarily as bombers.

At the battle of the Coral Sea, the USS Lexington sent up SBD Dauntless dive bombers to try to fend off attacking Japanese planes. They failed and the Lexington was sunk, rather effectively proving that even though they could fight in theory, neither the planes nor the pilots were fighters but were, in fact, bombers.

McCain's plane was made for dropping bombs, and that is how it was used. That makes the plane a bomber. McCain was dropping bombs. That makes him a bomber.

And speaking of crashing and burning, revisiting the West Side Story is nothing compared to what the Gray Lady should be apologizing about. I suppose we can expect an apology over Judith Miller, the outing of Valerie Plame, the run-up to the Iraq war and the search for WMDs sometime in the 2050s.

[razors edge]

3. This is another BS story of no significance.

No offense RL but it smells of diversion and division, the Pukes main stronghold of public discourse.

I launched and repaired both Sky Hawks and Phantoms, during the early 80s.

Missions are set up to have a variety of lethality, and if all goes well they all come home.

But they all fly against the same threats regardless of some DOD designation on the purchase order.

An A, or F, or RF, or any other designation won't save your ass when the golden BB comes your way. There is no walking home, you strap your ass to a rocket and do the mission, some are better than others but they all go into the same envelope of danger.

They all go in support of the boots on the ground, whether they should be there or not.

Edit: I didn't mean to lecture, I know you know.

[Festivito]

4. This is a ruse to solidify the idea of our press being Left-wing.

News sources in this country are starting to be questioned. So, here the brave CON water-cooler guy can whine on this silly pointless point to nodding heads.

See how the LW controls the press! He'll exclaim.

Check my sig line because here's how the do it. The listeners will never be more certain of a press LW status after something like this.

[Phredicles]

5. Oh, I thought you'd somehow gotten an edition from 2050,

retracting all the Judith Miller WMD stuff.:P

[onager]

6. Much ado about nothing.

But I can't help noting, an error easily avoided if the high-and-mighty Paper Of (Broken) Record would just learn the frigging alphabet:

"A" is for "Attack"
"B" is for "Bomber"
"C" is for "Cargo"
"F" is for "Fighter"
"R" is for "Reconnaisance," though in this modern age they are usually designated "E" for "Electronic." Esp. in the Navy.
"T" is for "Trainer"

Multi-role aircraft must really confuse them, like the F/A-18 Hornet or EA-6 Intruder.

With minor changes, these designations have been the same since about 1930. During WWII, fighters were designated "Pursuit" aircraft, as in P-51 Mustang, and photo-reconnasisance planes carried the "F" designator. Maybe for "Foto." So a P-51 with cameras became an F-6.

[RamboLiberal]

7. Not to mention the F-117 Nighthawk or Stealth Fighter

Which is not a fighter but a bomber.

[Javaman]

8. Well damn, thank god. this gives me hope!!

real honest to god hope!!!

So sometime around 2051 the times should issue an apology on how they pumped up the bullshit stories about saddam and his chemical weapons.

relieved I tells ya, relieved!!!

:banghead:

[baldguy]

10. So, they'll start correcting their "errors" about the Clintons around 2040?