Sunday, August 05, 2007

Editorial Mistake by The Straits Times?


I felt a sense of deja vu when I was reading the article "Whole world is watching but who cares?" by Joe Queenan in today's Sunday Times. The article, its content and even its title, looked very familiar; it was as though I have already read it before.

Then, I realised something. This was not deja vu that I was experiencing. I have already read the abovementioned article before, in the Straits Times no less!

Hurriedly, I went to look through my collection of newspaper clippings and as I have expected, I found a clipping of an article which was published in the Straits Times on 11/7/2007, also written by Joe Queenan, and entitled: "All the world's watching, but no one cares".

I then compared the 2 articles (i.e. the one which was published today and the one published almost one month back) and they were exactly the same, word for word; only the paragraphing was slightly different.

Hmm... We already have local TV stations having repeat telecasts of old locally produced TV shows and now, we have repeat publications of old articles?

Hmm... I wonder whether it is a case of the ST editors having a short memory (Dory syndrome?) or them not doing their jobs well enough (no offence but they allowed the repeat publication of an article they already published just only almost one month ago!)?

P.S. I wrote to the ST Forum addressing this mistake of theirs; I wonder whether my letter will see the light of day.

P.P.S. 28/8/2007
Finally, the Straits Times have replied to my email: apologising for the repeating of the article, thanking me for alerting them and saying that their newsroom has been notified. However, it seems that they won't be publishing my letter though.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey there...

what do you think? Will a Singaporeaan pseudo-govt body actually puts his hand up and admit they've made a mistake?? :-) They'll probably regret the error.

compare this with the big BBC booboo when they invited a guy to appear on a tv interview, when he actually came into the studio to go for a job interview!!

How did BBC react when the WHOLE WORLD wrote in, made fun of them etc? BBC apologised, recalled both men (the mistaken one and the actual one), had a small interview with both of them, laughed about it and apologised. "We at BBC thought we were perfect, well, we aren't, i guess."

aygee

Anonymous said...

They will say...

Another honest mistake. Let's move on.

***
With all the editors in the paper, they still cannot get one simple thing - checking. It's more like stagnant times.

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