Regret the error

Tucked away, as typical for any paper, on the least-read page (the second one), is an interesting "correction" in Thursday's Telegram:

An editing error resulted in an incorrect headline - "Being a Tory not popular, according to Williams" - appearing on page A4 of The Telegram Feb. 27.

The story was about federal/provincial relations.

In fact, Premier Danny Williams did not say or imply that it isn't popular to be a Tory

And the "correction", such as it is, to the "error", such as it is, could have stopped right there. But the continuation of the "correction" reveals the real motivation behind whoever — and golly gosh, who could that be? — made the complaint that led to the "correction" of the "error":

, and his comments were about the federal Conservatives - not the provincial Progressive Conservatives.

Was the headline erroneous enough for the Telegram to regret? The direct speech quoted by Steve Bartlett in the "offending" piece included:

I can't see anybody who is aware of what Stephen Harper has done to this province even running for him in the first place, to be quite honest with you [...]

I don't think the Harper government, the Conservative government, is good for this country. The quicker we can get rid of him, the better.

Was a headline over such statements, especially the first-quoted, that erroneous at all?

Being a Tory not popular, according to Williams

That's pretty much what he said; slightly paraphrased, but not outside the realm of Newspaper Headlinese.


Yet, the same Terminology Police who objected to the "Being a Tory not popular" headline, especially since it might possibly be construed, during a polling period no less, that Tories Provincial are not popular, either have not yet objected to the innacurate use of the word "donation", or the paper hasn't yet run it.


This, even though a previous, and, not co-incidentally, pre-election, misuse of the word "donation" got corrected, sorta, within two issues of the organ it appeared in.