Newsweek: the Magazine That Can't Shoot Straight

Don't you just love that old expression what goes around comes around---here is a great example I picked off of Daniel Pipe's web site. Newsweek magazine runs a mean-spirited article ripping apart Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy advisers for being too conservative. Then as if to show its lack of editorial quality it posts a side bar about Giuliani's foreign policy staff and mis-identifies five out of six of them. Nothing like Journalism huh?

Newsweek's Jaw-Dropping Erratum

October 15, 2007

The editor of Newsweek has added a remarkable erratum to the sidebar to a nasty article by Michael Hirsh about the Giuliani campaign, "Would You Buy a Used Hawk From This Man?" First, here is the sidebar:

Newsweek, Oct. 15, 2007, gets only five out of six identifications wrong.

The subsequent correction warrants a place in Guinness World Records.

Editor's Note: In our print edition, several captions for the photographs accompanying this report were inadvertantly transposed. Martin Kramer's photograph is identified as Norman Podhoretz; Daniel Pipes's photograph is identified as Kramer; Peter Berkowitz's photograph is identified as Pipes; Nile Gardiner's photograph is identified as Berkowitz's and Podhoretz's photograph is identified as Gardiner's. NEWSWEEK regrets the errors.

Comments: (1) There are six pictures in all on the page and five of the six captions are wrong; only that of Robert Kasten is correct. Aggregating so many errors at once takes real talent – but count on Newsweek.

(2) The inevitable implication is that, for Newsweek staff, all conservatives look alike.

(3) The accuracy of the picture captions provides an apt commentary for the rest of Newsweek's wretched coverage in this article.

(4) For another example of Newsweek's problem with quality, see "Lorraine Ali, the Worst Political Reporter in America?" (October 15, 2007)