Pundit Boxscore for Monday 29 March 2004

VICTORY ON COLUMNIST CORRECTIONS: Robert Cox of The National Debate deserves enormous credit for effectively organizing a campaign directed explicitly at the need for a better policy, and for pushing the issue even further by the publication of his parody corrections page. A major victory was achieved this weekend when The New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent revealed a memo from editorial page editor Gail Collins (scroll down to item #22) which announced a new policy on corrections of factual errors committed by their columnists:

And while their opinions are their own, the columnists are obviously required to be factually accurate. If one of them makes an error, he or she is expected to promptly correct it in the column. After some experimentation at different ways of making corrections, we now encourage a uniform approach, with the correction made at the bottom of the piece.

. . .

None of this is meant to suggest that columnist can pick or choose which errors to correct. They are expected to correct every error. Anyone who refused to fulfill this critical obligation would not be a columnist for The New York Times very long. And none of this is meant to suggest that the editorial page editor can use the policy to duck responsibility for inaccuracies on the page. Whenever an error is brought to the attention of one of the Times editors, it goes to me, and through me to the columnist in question. These are some of the top writers in American journalism. They take their reputation for accuracy very, very seriously.

This represents a significant tightening and clarification of Times policy, and it should result in more responsible behavior by columnists, now that they know that needed corrections will properly be inserted prominently in a future column.

LUSKIN ON KRUGMAN: Donald Luskin has been tenacious in monitoring Paul Krugman's columns. I have added his National Review Online archives to the "Further Reading" list at the end of last week's Krugman series.