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Dewey Scores in 2nd OT!

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by Bud Buck

In a shocking echo of America’s most famous incorrect headline, the New York Times sent several dozen U.S. Olympic Soccer fans into fits of despair yesterday afternoon when the “paper of record” posted an incorrect score from London. Here’s proof:

As you can see, the headline mistakenly declares Canada beat the U.S. 4-3 in overtime, when in fact the reverse was true.

The error was quickly corrected within minutes, but Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) issued an even quicker accuse-o-blurt wondering if Canadians had infiltrated key editorial positions at the newspaper.

“We already know they hate America,” Bachmann said. “And I’m not saying that a legion of Canuck editor-moles tried to undermine our democracy and attack our national pride because they’re drunk on fermented maple syrup – though they would have to be just that to think their sly trick might change reality. I’m merely asking a question.”

Moments later, Bachmann’s handlers denied any knowledge of the above quote, or they would have, had I tried to reach them.

I didn’t even call the New York Times for a comment on the blunder because it’s just too difficult to get anybody to talk to you there. But I’m guessing they’d say something like – “C’mon. It was online for just a few minutes – no biggie.”

An any rate, all this will be lost to spirited arguing over the penalty calling decisions of that Norwegian referee. In fact, the comment string on this story in the Times was so intensely focused on complaining about the calls, no one spoke up about the botched headline.

That’s what the internet has brought us – more mistakes, faster, with less attention paid. That’s my kind of reporting!

This is Bud Buck!

Yikes, it’s turning into journalism week at Trail Baboon. Although he is an extremely untrustworthy reporter, I think Bud caught a genuine error here. But it was only for only a few minutes, so really, who cares? Especially something like this, where anybody who follows the sport knew the correct score already.

How much faith do you have in online information?

71 thoughts on “Dewey Scores in 2nd OT!”

  2. Wildlife Lands Won’t Be Opened to Hunting is the headline in today’s Strib for an article about how wildlife lands set aside specifically for hunting will not be opened to grazing by cattle owned by farmers suffering in this drought.

    The Blue Doily endorses National Night Out and will be attending his local block party. I really believe in neighborhood cohesion, and there is usually free wine.

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      1. The Blue Doily believes in wine. He is working on the other stuff. As soon as I bring out a full line of endorsed products–I just know this–WordPress will go back to using my old gravatar. My two-year-old grandson takes instruction better than WordPress.

        OT: Liam popped some stylish sunglasses on his face last weekend and called out, “Hey, Mommy, I’m lookin’ good!” I’m amazed at his sophisticated grasp of colloquial English. He is not only saying interesting things but using English in a nuanced, stylish way.

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  3. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    I like the “Accuse-o-Blurt.” Very nice. And with MB in the state it is very useful tool. Now we will have to add the “Blurt-0-meter” to measure the outragousness of the “Accuse-o-Blurt” in question.

    I am quite skeptical about much information and opinion on the internet. However, I am absolutely certain that everything on this blog is 100 percent true, accurate, and sound. The characters that inhabit the space here are too real to be made-up. Bud Buck is someone of fine reputation. His record as a journalist, is–well, beyond reproach.

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    1. Well, Jacque, I think you more or less have it right about the information on this blog. I might differ slightly from you regarding Bud Buck’s reputation. Also, while I believe every thing you say, except that opinion on Bud, I might be a little off at times, so be careful.

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      1. Well, HMMPH. I’ve met Bud Buck (well, I think I’ve met him? He rings a bell somewhere–State Fair maybe?). I find him enigmatic yet charismatic. Fruity yet a tinge of oak–oh wait, that’s Steve’s wine.

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  4. Good morning. I think the internet is a good source of information. It pretty much replaces the need for an encyclopedia. Many people who post information on the internet are well informed and when there is an error there is a chance someone will notice it and post a correction. Of course, there are lots of things that are posted that are just opinions, not facts, but you can usually tell that they aren’t statements of fact.

    I heard a person who I think is a very good cook say that you should not rely on the internet for recipes. You do usually get better information and recipes from good cook books which might not not be available on the internet, so I think that cook made a good point. However, I do use the internet to find recipes and I do find some good ones there.

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    1. Thanks, Jim. You just reinforced my need to hang on to all 243 of my cookbooks (that’s a slight exaggeration). And despite my extensive cookbook collection, I often look up recipes on the internet. Some are so-so, some are fabulous. I got the recipes for both kinds of cupcakes that I made for my daughter’s wedding off the internet and they were very good.

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  5. online information has done a great service in making me realize that the information is all put n there by people. when it is typed on paper is looks so official but when it is simply typed onto an escreen it feels like some guys opinion.
    walter cronkite was a good man who took good care to make sure te news he brought us was as close to the truth as he could present it. rush limbaugh not so much. cbs the new york times yes
    fox news wall street journal not so much.
    information can be colored and while 50 years ago that was viewed and criminal and to be avoided in favor of truth today truth is for sale in advertiser bundles and sells better whne custom made for the opinion of the day.
    headlines schmedlines give me some truth.

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    1. Actually, although maybe there was a more accepted standard for Truth 50 years ago, the whole thing is constantly evolving. 100 years ago relatively few newspapers even tried to present objective truth. Papers were often openly partisan then, with names that indicated their particular bias.

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      1. This reminds me of a quote from Ronald Reagan, back in the 80s sometime…in reference to (as I recall) something with the Soviet Union, he responded, “….we have a different standard of morality than they do – we tell the truth.” (Not buying it Ronnie.)

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  6. I selectively believe what I read online. Some sites need to be taken with a grain of salt, some the whole shaker. Some days I feel like John Lennon:

    I’m sick and tired of hearing things
    From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
    All I want is the truth
    Just gimme some truth

    I’ve had enough of reading things
    By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
    All I want is the truth
    Just gimme some truth

    No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky
    Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
    With just a pocketful of hope
    Money for dope
    Money for rope

    Woho!

    No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky
    Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
    With just a pocketful of hope
    Money for dope
    Money for rope

    I’m sick to death of seeing things
    From tight-lipped, condescending, mama’s little chauvinists
    All I want is the truth
    Just gimme some truth now

    I’ve had enough of watching scenes
    Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas
    All I want is the truth now
    Just gimme some truth

    No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky
    Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
    With just a pocketful of hope
    It’s money for dope
    Money for rope

    Ah, I’m sick to death of hearing things
    from uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
    All I want is the truth now
    Just gimme some truth now

    I’ve had enough of reading things
    by neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
    All I want is the truth now
    Just gimme some truth now

    All I want is the truth now
    Just gimme some truth now
    All I want is the truth
    Just gimme some truth
    All I want is the truth
    Just gimme some truth

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  7. Morning
    I love the internet and having a smart phone because I’m a curious kind of guy. Someone asked me recently why I didn’t use my phone as a GPS. It’s because I’m too busy looking up random crap on the phone to use it for directions too.
    -What’s that flower in the ditch? -What was the ‘Battle of Athens’? And did they really use a hollow log as a cannon? -What kind of dead animal is that on the side of the road?
    And IMDB.
    Is everything true? Probably not. But I can still make it sound like I know what I’m talking about.

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    1. Your attitude is healthy. Not everything on the net is true . . . so what is new about that? Was it ever true that we could sheepishly put our faith in everything in newspapers, radio reports, billboards, newsletters, movies, etc, etc. We have always lived in a world where there are FAR more claims of truth than actual truth. What is new is that we have a richer variety of sources to consult, so we can balance competing claims if we have the energy and integrity to do so.

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      1. Orson Welles apparently knew this well-see Citizen Kane as well as War of the Worlds.
        Would love to hear his thoughts on the current media scene, but not sure it would be safe to put the tool of the internet into the hands of that cunning brain.

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    2. I love using my smart phone to answer all those random questions!
      A friend used his smart phone to answer a random question at a barbecue: How fast does a woodpecker’s head move to make the sound it makes when he bangs a tree? And we learned that there are special muscles in a woodpecker’s head that helps cushion his (or her) brain.
      But I agree, you need to check all that lovely information!

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  10. How much faith do you have in online information?
    ***
    About as much as I do in mainstream media. It’s just that online gives you so many more wacko interpretations of fact than you get with Big Media. Makes for more entertainment value … which is what information peddling has devolved into these days, don’t you think? It doesn’t matter what we report, as long as we get more ears listening and eyeballs watching than the other guy, so we can sell more advertising of crappy products few want and most don’t need.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. its nice not to be alone in the view the world is a skuzzy place full of sleezballs who should be whacked up side the head. going through life with this knowledge makes my cheery outlook on life seem misplaced and ill advised. pt barnum said theres a sucker born every minute and had a great time with the premise that has now been adopted by the media at large.insteadof bearded women and pinheads (remember the movie freaks) we have bill o reilly and the teapartyheads.
      hey has anyone considered buying any of the items advertised here on the trail? (other than minne-sota donuts) verizon today is a real live sponser.

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      1. There was an ad for a Volt that popped up not too long ago. I probably will not buy one, but I will give it some consideration.

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        1. Perhaps we need to test-market them in some store to see how much of a demand there is for them. If we tell you the store, then perhaps all local baboons can assure they fly off the shelves and get us off to a good start.

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        3. we need to decide if the travail mug messages need to be individualized or if we can come up with universal inside jokes or comment that will allow for 10 of the same mug to be made. if so we can buy them and resell tem and buty them and resell them and only have to get 100 produced to sell the first thousand. we will lose 5 dollars a mug on the ones we buy back but make it all up when the order for 500,000 comes in to handle th onslaught our test market has indicated will be inevitable. thanks for re lighting the fir pj. just dont fall down again. i forgot you were involved as president of travail mugs. lets go

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        5. tim, I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but trust me, I have no intention of falling down again. As soon as today’s B-12 vitamin shot kicks in, I’ll be ready for action.

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        8. a universal inside joke would be something like ” my boss is an a**hole” but in french so you could set it on the bosses desk during a conversation with him/her and hear the roars coming form the other room but go incognito.
          or
          “i suck” in lithuanian for visitors to enjoy their coffee in.

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        9. how about one where the cuphas “dont ask” in 15 different languages on the outside
          spørger ikke
          не питају
          ne demandez pas
          fragen nicht
          טאָן ניט פרעגן
          不问

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  11. I think the whole allure of the internet has to do with our inability to wait for answers and information, and the illusion that the internet will gratify that need. When we were at Pine Ridge last week, I never saw a newspaper or computer screen and I didn’t have cell phone service unless I stood on a certain nearby rise and pointed the phone in the right direction. Our daughter was upset that we were not at her beck and call, but I sure didn’t miss the urgency and immediacy of cell and internet. (A nice fat newspaper would have been great, though.)

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    1. i love yellowstone because they dont allow towers to be built to intrude on your solitude and vacation mode. they are looking after us when we are unable to look after ourselves.

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    2. Me too, Renee – just spent 9 days with out of town guests and VERY little news or computer… seemed like a different world. Did watch CBS Sunday Morning, however, which had a spot about this area of W. Virginia, where “Cell phones and WiFi are banned in…a 13,000-square mile swath of the state that in 1958 was declared by the FCC the National Radio Quiet Zone. ”
      http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162-57437846/a-rare-island-of-serenity-thanks-to-the-fcc/?tag=showDoorFlexGridRight;flexGridModule

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  12. When folks swear by the info they read on the internet I often smile and ask if that is the same device that regularly offers enhanced sexual organs and money from banks in Nigeria.

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  13. My faith in online information varies according to the seriousness of the question. If I want to know what happened in Marvel’s “Civil War” arc, I know I’ll easily be able to find a half-dozen or more painstakingly detailed point-by-point analyses that have been thoroughly nitpicked by other geeks for errors. If I want to know the real story behind the real estate crash, I know I’ll have to spend hours trawling news archives and blogs, identifying each source’s political bent and weighing the information given against the author’s partisanship and very possibly emerging no more enlightened than when I started. For regular news I tend to go to foreign sources like the BBC, the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the like, especially since the New York Times instituted their paywall (sorry, NYT, I swear I’ll subscribe someday!), but for commentary I like to read wildly partisan lefty sites like Counterpunch, Mother Jones, Alternet and so on. Makes me feel less alone in the world, though I must say most of my friends are liberal and some far more than liberal.

    The internet has made it wonderfully easy for subcultures and minority groups to find each other and raise not only their own self-esteem but public awareness of their issues. However, it’s also made it too easy to cocoon oneself in a media world of one’s own choice, which no dissention or interrogation can penetrate. Now, it’s possible that, years ago, people read the newspaper (whatever its political viewpoint), nodded their heads and said, “That’s how it must have been, the paper said so and the paper doesn’t lie,” but I like to think people used to argue with books and reportage–and with each other–and come away thoughtful instead of just angry, the way they do today.

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    1. People knew that if they wanted to see their letter to the editor in print, they were going to have to write something a little bit measured and thoughtful. With no editor controlling the content online, they can just spew whatever venom is bubbling in their brain at any given moment.

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      1. In our local paper they seem to print all the letters that they get. They have printed some that really shouldn’t have been printed.

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        1. OK – I will! I’m a regular on the Strib politics & opinion boards for about two years now. Lately, I’ve taken to ending each post with “OBAMA/BIDEN 2012”. Drives ’em crazy. I’m also a fan of Huffington Post, although I only post a few times a week. Mostly, I open HP up a few times each day just to see the headlines and read a few back-stories to the day or week’s events.

          Last night, I felt like causing trouble, so I registered for Fox Nation, a really right wing online rag. I commenced to post one pro-Obama ditty after another, actively refuting the relentless lies appearing. This is called “trolling”. It kinda got away from me because within seconds of calling out one lie, a response would appear – almost like instant messaging! Well, I just couldn’t make myself quit posting then responding to the bagger’s response, and so on. By the time I finally quit it was 4AM (I began this exercise in futility around 9PM). It’s very addictive getting instant replies, not to mention being about the
          the ONLY rational person on the whole board. I make a good little troll, too.

          This “hobby” is seductive in that first thing in the morning, I’m checking to see how my last evening’s posts were doing, then check for new controversial articles to begin the day’s
          rounds of back & forth. It’s quite impersonal, but safe and more interactive than, say, watching cable news shows! As I’ve written before, my head is overflowing with completely useless political trivia, but it does engage my brain. For what purpose, I really don’t know. I’ve long since forgotten how to keep myself occupied without my Mac in my lap.

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  14. I haven’t seen Clyde on this blog for many days. Are you out there Clyde? Are you okay? Please let us know how you are doing if you see this.

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  15. I’m with Jacque. Everything on this blog is 100 percent true. I never check for facts about anything I read here.

    I’ve had a small, petty complaint for years. It’s the time of year when allergy sufferers begin to react strongly from ragweed pollen. Every year, while providing information about the pollen count, some news reporter feels obliged to show a picture of ragweed. I don’t know who is providing those pictures for them, but I’ve never seen a correct picture of ragweed on the local news. Most times it’s goldenrod, a plant native to the midwest which does not cause an allergic reaction. The internet has been helpful in this case because you can get the actual facts.
    Ragweed (there are two species: common ragweed and giant ragweed – both shown here but not identified) : http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=amar2
    Early goldenrod (there are several other species): http://www.prairieresto.com/ItemDisplay.php?i=265&cID=10

    I hope those links work. I don’t trust the internet.

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  16. I blogged up above that errors didn’t start with the internet, and now this post makes me blush, Krista. When I was a magazine editor, we never had enough good pictures of fish. I had one that was very clear, sharp and had good contrast, so about once a year I’d run it with one of our walleye stories. The problem is, the fish was a sauger. Only one reader, a DNR fisheries guy, spotted the difference, and once a year he’d write a cranky letter. As a former editor of Fins and Feathers, I can say emphatically that you could not believe everything you read in that magazine, nor could you trust the photo captions.

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    3. I know you said that at least partially in jest but I know I do it. But every once in a while I catch myself and say, “wait a minute. OUR people could be spinning this, too.” Especially when there is a chart or graph. I wouldn’t begin to know how to verify nor would i be inspired to try.

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  18. This made me think of Mark Twain’s quote, “”There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
    Which led me to these:

    Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything. ~Gregg Easterbrook

    98% of all statistics are made up. ~Author Unknown

    Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. ~Aaron Levenstein

    Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable. ~Bobby Bragan, 1963

    Statistics can be made to prove anything – even the truth. ~Author Unknown

    Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped off. ~Paul Brodeur, Outrageous Misconduct

    Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable. ~Author Unknown

    Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math. ~Author Unknown

    He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts – for support rather than for illumination. ~Andrew Lang

    Statistics are like women; mirrors of purest virtue and truth, or like whores to use as one pleases. ~Theodor Billroth

    Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say. ~William W. Watt

    Then there is the man who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of six inches. ~W.I.E. Gates

    There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up. ~Rex Stout, Death of a Doxy

    I always find that statistics are hard to swallow and impossible to digest. The only one I can ever remember is that if all the people who go to sleep in church were laid end to end they would be a lot more comfortable. ~Mrs. Robert A. Taft

    Satan delights equally in statistics and in quoting scripture…. ~H.G. Wells, The Undying Fire

    The average human has one breast and one testicle. ~Des McHale

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