The NY Times: Caught Red-Handed in an Obviously False Story — And It STILL Won’t Retract or Correct (Times Corrects — See Update 4)

Those who ridicule critics of the formerly Mainstream Media (also affectionately known in these parts as the WORMs [Worn-Out Reactionary Media]) as throwing around baseless allegations over trivial matters, need to explain how the New York Times Magazine can get a story so wrong, have it rubbed in their collective faces, and refuse to correct it, even when their ombudsman calls them out (may require free registration).

Good luck. I’m waiting…..

And so the credibility and the business viability of the Grey Lady continue to sink.

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UPDATE: Thomas Lifson at American Thinker tells the story as succinctly as it can be told, and calls it the Times Rathergate.

UPDATE 2: This story is the subject of 2007’s first Hot Air vid. Michelle Malkin’s money line: “The Times’ pro-abortion poster child is a woman convicted of infanticide.”

UPDATE 3: Michelle Malkin’s post at her site — “All the Abortion Lies Fit to Print.”

UPDATE 4, Jan. 11: Presumably in response to an e-mail I sent the Times, I received an e-mail from the Times’ Corporate HQ that is apparently a correction the paper published on Sunday –

January 7, 2007, Sunday Late Edition – Final
Section 1 Page 2 Column 5 Desk: Metropolitan Desk Length: 323 words
Type: Editors’ Note

Editors’ Note

An article in The Times Magazine on April 9 reported on the effects of laws that make all abortions illegal in El Salvador. One case the article described was that of Carmen Climaco, who is serving a 30-year prison sentence in El Salvador.

The article said she was convicted in 2002 of aggravated homicide, and it presented the recollections of the judge who adjudicated Ms. Climaco’s case during the pretrial stage. The judge, Margarita Sanabria, told The Times that she believed that Ms. Climaco had an abortion when she was 18 weeks pregnant, and that she regretted allowing the case to be tried as a homicide. The judge based her legal decision on two reports by doctors.

The first, by a doctor who examined Ms. Climaco after the incident, concluded that she had been 18 weeks pregnant and had an abortion. A second medical report, based on an examination of the body that was found under Ms. Climaco’s bed, concluded that her child was carried to term, was born alive and died in its first minutes of life.

The three-judge panel that received the case from Judge Sanabria concluded
that the second report was more credible than the first, and the panel convicted Ms. Climaco of aggravated homicide.

The Times should have obtained the text of the ruling of the three-judge panel before the article was published, but did not vigorously pursue the document until details of the ruling were brought to the attention of editors in late November.

A picture caption with the article also misstated the facts of the ruling. Ms. Climaco was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a case that was initially thought to be an abortion but was later ruled to be a homicide; she was not given 30 years in prison for an abortion that was ruled a homicide.

Ms. Climaco is now preparing to appeal her conviction. The Times is continuing to investigate the case.

“You don’t say” point of the day: Yeah, I would think examining the dead baby would tell you more than examining the mother who isn’t carrying the baby any more.