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When the media makes a mistake, Craig Silverman takes note. He’s the creator of the website Regret the Error, and he joins us again with his annual round-up of the year in corrections, errors, apologies and more. Silverman says 2009 was the year of fact checking, but not by the people you’d think.
My favorite correction of 2009, and perhaps ever, appeared in the Birmingham News newspaper this past August: "A recipe for Italian Breaded Chicken Parmesan on Page 2G of Wednesday's Food section suggested beating the chicken with a small mallard. That, of course, is incorrect. A mallet would be a better choice."
I would have had more respect for Mr. Silverman's fact checking had he not referred to a Catholic communion wafer as something that "represents the body of Christ." For Catholics, the wafer does not represent but, through transubstantiation, _is_ the body of Christ. That distinction is crucial for understanding the controversy that made this story.
For more on this criticism of the media's treatment of this story see: http://www.getreligion.org/?p=14713
Wonderful poem, Gary.
David, it's a good point you make about the wafer. I'm not Catholic but I attended a Catholic high school and I remember the idea of transubstantiation quite well. I even remember that many of the Catholic students thought that the wafer merely "represented" the body of Christ.
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