We run some pretty good corrections at the Guardian (you can buy whole books of them), but I'm not sure we've ever run a correction to a twelve-year-long error, as the New York Times does today. IIt's a confusing one, too. The paper sheepishly confesses that it's been calling McCain a "fighter pilot" when in fact he flew an "attack plane" in Vietnam. And not even a big, heavy, manly attack plane, but a light attack plane, the A-4 Skyhawk. Well, that's just pathetic: I mean, who can't fly an A-4 Skyhawk?
In any case, stand by for accusations today that running the correction demonstrates, once more, the Times's liberal bias. Meanwhile, note the correction at the end of the same corrections column, in which the Times apologises for getting someone's name wrong in a theatre review. In 1960.
