Brian Flood
Fox NewsSat, 09 Oct 2021 00:00 UTC
© Business Insider
issued a massive correction Thursday after the liberal newspaper severely misreported the number of COVID hospitalities among children in the United States by more than 800,000.
A report headlined "A New Vaccine Strategy for Children: Just One Dose, for Now," by science and health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli, was
peppered with errors before major changes were made to the story. The Times initially reported "nearly 900,000 children have been hospitalized" with COVID since the pandemic began, when the factual data in the now-corrected version is that "more than 63,000 children were hospitalized with Covid-19 from August 2020 to October 2021."
The paper also botched actions taken by regulators in Sweden and Denmark and even bungled the timing of a critical FDA meeting.
Journalist Jeryl Bier
asked, "How did an error that large happen, @
NYTimes?"
Columnist Phil Kerpen sarcastically said the
Times reporter was "meeting her usual standards" with the inaccurate report.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald
mocked the paper, as well referring to Donald McNeil Jr., who was forced to step down earlier this year.
Many observers also mocked the paper for printing that Mandavilli "is the 2019 winner of the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting" directly below the correction.Rutgers University professor Richard H. Ebright mentions how to win and use the excellence prize:
Comment: Reporting standards? The author's lies therein.
The correction issued on Thursday means Mandavilli exaggerated the number of child hospitalizations by 837,000 cases. Approximately 500 American children have eventually died from the disease. The exaggeration was included in a report on the debate surrounding whether and how to vaccinate children.
Mandavilli has been a controversial figure at the Times for her ideologically-colored pandemic coverage. In May, she tweeted that
"Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not today."
She later deleted the tweet but not before adding
"a theory can have racist roots and still gather reasonable supporters along the way. Doesn't make the roots any less racist or the theory any more convincing, though."
The theory has not yet been disproved. To the contrary, it has picked up a number of prominent supporters in the scientific community, including former Times reporters Nicholas Wade and Donald McNeil. McNeil was the lead coronavirus reporter at the publication prior to his being fired and smeared by the Times for uttering a racial epithet in the context of discussing its moral valence and grace on an educational trip several years ago.
The correction is notable as the nature of the threat that coronavirus poses to children figures heavily in the continued and often partisan debates over vaccine and mask mandates in schools.
While Republicans such as Florida governor Ron DeSantis maintain that such decisions should be left up to parents, President Joe Biden and American Federation of Teachers head Randi Weingarten have advocated for mandates, insisting that they're necessary to protect students and staff alike.
While there have always been reporters that cut corners or frame an issue to enhance an ideology, altering the scope of children's deaths is sensationalism most despicable.
Comment: Reporting standards? The author's lies therein. While there have always been reporters that cut corners or frame an issue to enhance an ideology, altering the scope of children's deaths is sensationalism most despicable.