Corrections: 2005

2005 Corrections

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The Dec. 26 story "The year in sports" by King Kaufman referred to Rafael Palmeiro hitting his 500th home run in 2005. The milestone Palmeiro achieved was getting his 3,000th hit. The story has been fixed.
[Correction made 12/30/05]

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An earlier version of "The War on 'Munich'" included this line, "He's somewhat baffled by the attacks on 'Munich,' including a negative review that appeared in his own paper, which called the movie 'little more than a stylish bumper sticker -- well meaning and eye catching but ephemeral, a deceptively slight work that dissolves in its own seriousness.' Goldberg says that he didn't intend to include the review in his paper among those he was criticizing. Salon regrets the error.
[Correction made 12/20/05]

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The March 11, 2003 story "The Dancing Plant" included the sentence, "It is possible -- and Kampermpool certainly makes it sound as if he has -- that he has met the King of Thailand, His Majesty Bhumibol Adulyadej." A representative of Dr. Pradit contacted Salon to state that the doctor had never met the King of Thailand, nor did he intend to give the impression that he did so. An editor's note reflecting this has been added to the story.
[Correction made 10/31/05]

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The Oct. 29 "Ask The Pilot" mistakenly identified "This American Life" as a National Public Radio program and its host Ira Glass as an "NPR icon." "This American Life" is produced by Public Radio International. The error has been corrected.
[Correction made 10/31/05]

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The Oct. 27 column "Shipwrecked" mistakenly identified Paul Wolfowitz as a former secretary of defense, when in fact he was deputy secretary. The error has been corrected.
[Correction made 10/27/05]

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The original version of the Oct. 24 story "Hurricane Horror Stories" stated that New Orleans' Ninth Ward was deliberately flooded in 1927. It was the St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes that were deliberately flooded then. Salon has corrected the error.
[Correction made 10/24/05]

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The Oct. 21 story "We see dead people?" originally referred to a medium named Douglas Hume. His read name is Daniel Dunglas Home. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 10/21/05]

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The Oct. 19 story "Homo Confidential" originally stated that Rock Hudson died in 1987, when in fact it was 1985. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 10/19/05]

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The Oct. 13 story "Dub masters" originally stated that the second season of "Uncle Morty's Dub Shack" would begin on Oct. 14, 2005. In fact, the second season will begin in mid-February, 2006. On Oct. 14 ImaginAsian TV begins rebroadcasting the first season of the show. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 10/13/05]

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In Gary Kamiya's Oct. 7 review of George Packer's "The Assassins' Gate," the ellipses in the following passage from the book were erroneously dropped because of a coding error. Salon regrets the error.

"For Feith and Wurmser, the security of Israel was probably the prime mover ... The idea of realigning the Middle East by overthrowing Saddam Hussein was first proposed by a group of Jewish policy makers and intellectuals who were close to the Likud. And when the second President Bush looked around for a way to think about the uncharted era that began on September 11, 2001, there was one already available."
[Correction made 10/10/05]

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The Sept. 29 story "The Hammer Falls" originally stated that Tom DeLay raised $190,000 from corporations. In fact, he and two associates are charged with raising $155,000 from corporations. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 9/29/05]

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Following the publication of the Sept. 14 story "New Orleans After Dark," Jonathan Brown of the New Orleans Police Department contacted Salon. He identified himself as the officer who pulled over Joshua Clark and Ellen Harris for being on the streets after curfew. He reported that when he asked the pair to vacate the car, he and his partner drew their guns, but neither he nor his partner said, as the story originally stated, "We have our guns drawn! We are going to shoot you if you move!" Clark disputes this. Brown also reported that, contrary to the story, he did not mention his mother; his friend Mario left for Tallahassee and not Hammond; and that the gun he carries is a Glock and not a 9mm. Clark responds: "Unfortunately, I was not able to follow up with the officers to clarify the details. But that's no excuse. I deeply regret the mistakes." The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 9/21/05]

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The Sept. 20 story "Attack of the Listless Lads" originally stated that Kobe Bryant had been tried for rape in Eagle, Colo. In fact, he was charged with rape, but the case did not go to trial. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 9/21/05]

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The Sept. 11 column "The Bitter Lessons of Four Years" noted that Condoleezza Rice had shopped for shoes on Madison Avenue during the Katrina disaster; in fact, she shopped for shoes on Fifth Avenue. The sentence has been corrected.
[Correction made 9/12/05]

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The Sept. 8 column "What Didn't Go Right?" originally stated that George H.W. Bush lost Florida in 1992, which is incorrect. The sentence has been removed.
[Correction made 9/8/05]

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The Sept. 6 story "New Orleans Rising" originally reported that singer and songwriter Ani DiFranco is the wife of Mike Napolitano. The couple are not married. Salon regrets the mistake. Sources now report that the New Orleans clubs Vaughn's and Maple Leaf appear to have escaped flood damage, contrary to initial claims. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 9/7/05]

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The Aug. 26 King Kaufman's Sports Daily misidentified the first black football player at the University of Alabama. His name was John Mitchell. The story has been fixed.
[Correction made 8/26/05]

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In "The death of Al Mutanabbi Street" (Aug. 26, 2005), an Arab-American from Indiana was described as working for the International Republican Institute. In a subsequent conversation, he explained that he did not work directly for the IRI but has worked with them. IRI states that no one fitting that description has ever worked with or for its organization. The story reflects the change.
[Correction made 8/26/05]

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The Aug. 19 story "After Cindy Sheehan" mischaracterized the Middle East scholar Phyllis Bennis' ideas about what might happen in Iraq if the United States withdraws its forces immediately. The story has been clarified to reflect Bennis' view that it is fighters motivated by nationalism -- and not by religious extremism -- who will put down their arms if U.S. forces leave.
[Correction made 8/23/05]

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A reference in James Norton's July 24 story "Tales of the City" erroneously referred to Earl Cox as an editor at John Wiley & Sons. Cox worked in sales at Wiley for nine years, but currently runs a publishing consultancy that works with African-American authors.
[Correction made 8/16/05]

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The July 24 story "The Chronicles of Nanny-a" incorrectly described the tenure of a nanny employed by Helaine Olen. The nanny was not employed full-time. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 8/16/05]

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The Aug. 11 column "The Informer" contained several errors: It said that Bob Novak had made a vulgar remark on "Crossfire" when he actually made the remark on "Inside Politics"; it did not make it clear that Pat Buchanan, rather than Novak, was the first conservative host of "Crossfire"; it misidentified Steve Huntley as the editor, instead of the editorial page editor, of the Chicago Sun-Times; and it said that President Bush had referred to the Niger/uranium allegation in his 2002, rather than his 2003, State of the Union address. In addition, an earlier version of the piece omitted a credit to Amy Sullivan's profile of Novak in the Washington Monthly. Salon regrets the errors.
[Correction made 8/11/05]

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The June 23 story "London Jogging" mistakenly stated that British Prime Minister Tony Blair represented London's Islington neighborhood. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 7/25/05]

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The June 16 story "Deadly Immunity" misattributed a quote to Andy Olson, former legislative counsel to Sen. Bill Frist. The comment was made by Dean Rosen, health policy advisor to Frist. Rolling Stone and Salon regret the error.
[Correction made 7/21/05]

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The July 13 story "Judy Miller and the Press, Part 2" originally stated, "Valerie Plame wasn't a classified undercover agent but a desk employee at CIA headquarters." The story has been corrected to reflect that there remains debate about whether Plame was a classified undercover agent at the time she was employed at CIA headquarters.
[Correction made 7/15/05]

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The July 11 story "The Television Will Be Revolutionized" quoted David Neuman, the head of programming at Current TV, as saying that the network would not post all the videos it receives from viewers on its Web site. After the article was published, a spokesman for Current TV informed Salon that the network will indeed post all videos submitted by viewers on the Current TV Web site.
[Correction made 7/13/05]

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A headline on the July 12 King Kaufman's Sports Daily misidentified former Auburn football coach Terry Bowden as Bobby Bowden. Bobby Bowden, the coach at Florida State, is Terry Bowden's father. The story has been fixed.
[Correction made 7/13/05]

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The July 12 story "Me & the Chocolate Factory" misidentified a song from the film "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." The quoted lyrics are from the tune "The Candy Man," not "Pure Imagination." Also, Roald Dahl's book was mistakenly referred to as "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," while the correct title is "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Additionally, some dialogue from the film was misquoted or incomplete. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 7/12/05]

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In the July 11 story "Reading Anna Karenina," a paragraph contained the line: "As a record of his struggle, this book is particularly poignant, because after writing one of the greatest novels in history, Tolstoy never wrote another one, and hardly ever wrote fiction at all again, only religious essays that scarcely anyone reads anymore." In fact, Tolstoy continued to write novels and short fiction, even as he devoted himself to the writing of religious essays. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 7/11/05]

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Stephanie Zacharek's review of the movie "Fantastic Four" incorrectly stated that the character Invisible Woman is known as Invisible Girl in the comic books on which the film is based. In fact, the character's name was changed from Invisible Girl to Invisible Woman in the comic books during the 1980s. The review has been corrected.
[Correction made 7/11/05]

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In the July 5 story "The F-Word," a paragraph quoting Mandy Van Deven mispresented Van Deven's sentiments about the changing definitions of the word "feminism." When Van Deven was quoted as saying "Feminism is just what we determine it is," she was not referring to her own feelings on the subject. She was identifying the pattern of one group of feminists with which she does not necessarily identify herself. Salon regrets the error.
[Correction made 7/7/05]

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After publication of the June 16 story "Deadly Immunity," Salon and Rolling Stone corrected an error that misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms -- an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. At the time of the correction, we were aware that the comparison itself was flawed, but as journalists we considered it more appropriate to state the correct figure rather than replace it with another number entirely.

Since that earlier correction, however, it has become clear from responses to the article that the forty-percent number, while accurate, is misleading. It measures the total mercury load an infant received from vaccines during the first six months, calculates the daily average received based on average body weight, and then compares that number to the EPA daily limit. But infants did not receive the vaccines as a "daily average" -- they received massive doses on a single day, through multiple shots. As the story states, these single-day doses exceeded the EPA limit by as much as 99 times. Based on the misunderstanding, and to avoid further confusion, we have amended the story to eliminate the forty-percent figure.
[Correction made 7/01/05]

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The June 30 story "The Press vs. Scientology" referred to a 1988 article in the Boston Herald about one of its reporters having been pursued by a private detective after writing a series about Scientology. The date was in fact 1998. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 6/30/05]

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Sidney Blumenthal's "Empty Words" incorrectly identified the aircraft that landed aboard the USS Lincoln as an F-18 Hornet. The column has been corrected.
[Correction made 6/30/05]

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An earlier version of "Deadly Immunity" inadvertently dropped a word and transposed two sentences in a quote by Dr. John Clements. It also incorrectly stated that Dr. Sam Katz held a patent with Merck on the measles vaccine. In fact, Dr. Katz was part of a team that developed the vaccine and brought it to licensure, but he never held the patent. The story has been corrected. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.
[Correction made 6/24/05]

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An earlier version of "Deadly Immunity" stated that the Institute of Medicine convened a second panel to review the work of the Immunization Safety Review Committee that had found no evidence of a link between thimerosal and autism. In fact, the IOM convened the second panel to address continuing concerns about the Vaccine Safety Datalink data-sharing program, including those raised by critics of the IOM's earlier work. But the panel was not charged with reviewing the committee's findings. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the error.
[Correction made 6/22/05]

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The story "Deadly Immunity" has been updated to correct inaccuracies in the original version. As originally reported, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations before 1989, but the article failed to note that they were innoculated a total of 11 times with those vaccines, including boosters. The article also misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms -- an amount 40 percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. Finally, because of an editing error, the article misstated the contents of the rotavirus vaccine approved by the CDC. It did not contain thimerosal. The story has been corrected. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.
[Correction made 6/17/05]

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In the June 14 story "AP Dropped the Ball on the Downing Street Memo," Eric Boehlert misplaced quotation marks when quoting from the Portland Oregonian. The passage should have read:

At the Portland Oregonian recently, public editor Michael Arrieta-Walden covered the same territory: "For an international story, the Oregonian primarily relies on material provided from about 10 wire services. The Associated Press, the world's largest news gathering organization, essentially didn't cover the document in its reports until last weekend in a story mostly about John Bolton, Bush's nominee to become U.N. ambassador. The document then was reported on in an AP story stemming from last week's news conference involving Blair and Bush.

"The original story broke on a Sunday, so it was initially difficult to match without access to government officials and documents, said Nick Tatro, the AP's deputy international editor. Then, the AP editors who repeatedly considered doing a story, he said, didn't necessarily see the document as a clear-cut case of proving the manipulation of intelligence. Also, the demands of other important stories kept diverting them, he said. 'Our people felt it wasn't a completely clear comment from the raw material,' Tatro said. 'It was our intent to do a story, and it just didn't happen.'"

The story has been corrected. Salon regrets the error.
[Correction made 6/16/05]

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In Sidney Blumenthal's column "A Broken Body," an incorrect selling price and location for Randy "Duke" Cunningham's house have been corrected.
[Correction made 6/16/05]

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The article "When Toddlers Get Fired" has been changed since its original publication, at the request of the author. A partial line of dialogue, including an expletive, was removed.
[Correction made 5/30/05]

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A reference in Sidney Blumenthal's May 26 column to the Immaculate Conception has been corrected to refer to the Virgin Birth.
[Correction made 5/26/05]

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A reference in Neal Pollack's May 12 story "Comedy Smackdown" could have been read to suggest that the late comedian Phil Hartman had a drug problem. The reference to Hartman has been dropped to avoid confusion.
[Correction made 5/12/05]

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Due to an editing error, the May 9 story "When Celebrities Blog!" mistakenly claimed that Arianna Huffington had been a senator's wife, when in fact she was the wife of a Senate candidate. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 5/10/05]

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Sidney Blumenthal's "Holy Warriors" quoted a statement by Thomas Jefferson inaccurately. The story has been corrected, and Salon regrets the error.
[Correction made 04/21/05]

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The April 6 King Kaufman's Sports Daily misidentified the host who led into the Reds' Opening Day broadcast on WLW-radio in Cincinnati. The host's name is Bill Cunningham. The story has been fixed.
[Correction made 04/07/05]

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In "How They Learned to Love the Bomb," published March 29, Salon incorrectly stated that Los Alamos computer scientist Wen Ho Lee was acquitted of stealing nuclear secrets. In fact, Lee pleaded guilty to one felony charge of mishandling classified information; the remaining 58 charges against him were dropped. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 03/29/05]

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In "When Public Opinion Doesn't Matter," published March 21, Salon incorrectly reported that the March 18 broadcast of ABC's "World New Tonight With Peter Jennings" did not include a reference to polling the network had done on the Terri Schiavo controversy. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 03/21/05]

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In the March 9 story "Who killed Dan Rather?" the conservative activist Morton Blackwell was referred to as Morton Rockwell. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 03/09/05]

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In the story "Idiots in the Boardroom," published March 15, 2005, Salon characterized the reconstructed dialogue in Kurt Eichenwald's "Conspiracy of Fools" as provided to the author "second or third hand" and as "made up." Eichenwald states that no dialogue was based on third hand sourcing, and says in his notes on sourcing in the book that "Of course, I am not claiming that that the dialogue in these pages is a perfect transcript of events dating back some twenty years. It does, however, represent the best recollection of these events and conversations by participants, and more accurately reflects reality than mere paraphrase would. Invariably, subjects of interviews would find that my pressing them for ever more detailed descriptions and dialogue at times aided with documents I placed before them led to greater recall of the events." The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 03/15/05]

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In "Just Like a Woman," Salon incorrectly stated that the 13-to-1 ratio of males to females who scored over 700 on the math SAT in 1980 has changed little since then. In fact, the ratio has changed significantly and is now 2.8 to 1. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 03/02/05]

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In two "Nothing Personal" columns (Feb. 4, 2002, and Feb. 6, 2002), John Michael Hughes was described as a "stalker." In fact, Hughes was only arrested for trespassing. He was never arrested for, nor charged with the crime of, "stalking" Meg Ryan. The stories have been corrected. Salon regrets the error.
[Correction made 03/01/05]

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In "Bush's bait and switch," Rep. Geoff Davis was identified as having cosponsored "a bill that would repeal the federal income tax and abolish the IRS." Davis' staff subsequently informed Salon that Davis had not in fact cosponsored the bill, but had instead mistakenly been listed as a co-sponsor in a congressional database due to a legislative aide's error.
[Correction made 02/25/05]

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The Feb. 11 King Kaufman's Sports Daily incorrectly included Cal Ripken Jr. on a list of elite baseball players from the era between World War II and the dawn of free agency in 1977. Ripken broke into the majors in 1981. The list and a related statistic have been fixed.
[Correction made 02/13/05]

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In the story Bush's Dirty Little Secret" published Feb 3. 2005, Salon incorrectly stated that 4 percent of a worker's Social Security taxes could be put in private accounts. The correct amount is 4 percentage points, or about one third of a worker's wages paid over to Social Security. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 02/07/05]

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Due to an editing error, the Feb. 4, 2005 installment of "Ask the Pilot" confused standard miles with nautical miles. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 02/04/05]

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In the story Bush's Dirty Little Secret" published Feb 3. 2005, Salon incorrectly identified George Ball, instead of Robert Ball, as a former Social Security official. The story has been corrected.
[Correction made 02/04/05]

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In "The most liberal president of the 20th century" published on Feb. 2, 2005, Salon incorrectly reported that Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot to death a few weeks after Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. In fact, the assassination happened only a few days later. The error has been corrected.
[Correction made 02/3/05]

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In the "Ask the Pilot" published on Jan. 21, 2005, Salon incorrectly reported that British Airways had ceased its London-Lagos flights. In fact, the airline had only temporarily suspended the flights. The error has been corrected.
[Correction made 01/25/05]

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In the story "A Mac for the Masses," published Jan. 12. Salon incorrectly described the Mac Mini as being equipped with a CD drive. In fact it has a DVD/CD-RW drive. Salon regrets the error.
[Correction made 01/13/05]

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The Jan. 7 King Kaufman's Sports Daily said the Seattle Seahawks' 2004 record was 8-8. The Seahawks went 9-7. The story has been fixed.
[Correction made 1/7/05]