Latest New York Times error. It's huge.

The following correction appears in today’s New York Times.

An article on Saturday about a federal judge's order regarding photographs and videotapes related to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal misstated a deadline and the response by Defense Department lawyers. The government was given until Friday to black out some identifying details in the material, not to release it. Defense Department lawyers met that deadline, but asked the court to block the public release of the materials. They did not refuse to cooperate with an order for the materials' release.

You can find the article here. (NYT free registration may be required)

Here’s the headline Times’ editors gave the article:

Government Defies an Order to Release Iraq Abuse Photos

But the correction says nothing about the false headline, or how and why it was put in The Times.

Here’s the article’s first sentence:

Lawyers for the Defense Department are refusing to cooperate with a federal judge's order to release secret photographs and videotapes related to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

We know now that sentence, like the headline, is false. But again, as with the headline, we don’t know how or why something so manifestly false was written and published in The Times because so far The Times is refusing to say.

Folks, if the federal government refuses to comply with a court order, that’s a really big deal.

And when a major newspaper reports the government is refusing to comply with a court order it’s also a really big deal, not to be dismissed with one sentence at the end of a one paragraph correction noting other errors in the article.

The Times’ faithful readers may not expect a full and honest explanation of how such a monumental mistake was made, but thoughtful readers surely deserve one.

Blogger and attorney John Hinderaker notes that Times reporter Kate Zernike talked to a representative of the ACLU which brought the suit seeking release of the photos and videotapes; however she:

“quoted no representative of the government, and apparently talked to none; if she had, she would have realized that the entire premise for her story was incorrect. So millions of people were wrongly told that the "Government"--i.e., the Bush administration--had "defied" the order of a federal judge. If true, this would have been a noteworthy story. But it was a complete falsehood.”

Hinderaker is absolutely right.

Why didn’t Times’ editors think about the things he’s pointing out before they ran the story?

We need answers. A single sentence stuck at the end of a correction won’t do for something of this magnitude.

Hat Tip: Mudville Gazette