Art of the Blown Headline

Back in March, a headline in the _Washington Post_ conflated a North Korean missile test with a nuclear test. ACA’s Peter Crail “blogged it here”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1946/_wp_-blows-nk-headline.

They’ve done it again, this time with “Iran”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/20/AR2009052000523.html:

bq. Correction to This Article
A headline and earlier versions of this article, including in the print edition of today’s Washington Post, incorrectly said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had linked a medium-range missile test to his country’s nuclear program.

Not that a connection between Iran’s nuclear and missile programs is in any way implausible — quite the contrary! But it would have been pretty remarkable for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to come out and say it.

Keeping Up With The Post-It

The _New York Times_ had a different boner in “their coverage”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/middleeast/21iran.html of the same event today:

Though she avoided details, Mrs. Clinton was giving voice to a growing concern among administration officials, who have now had time to review the intelligence, that Iran seems to have made significant progress in at least two of the three technologies necessary to field an effective nuclear weapon.

The first is enriching uranium to weapons grade, now under way at the large nuclear complex at Natanz. The second is developing a missile capable of reaching Israel and parts of Western Europe, and now the country has several likely candidates. The third is designing a warhead that will fit on the missile.

_Bzzt._

Let’s put it this way. If Iran were actually enriching uranium to weapons grade at Natanz, this would have been the biggest buried lede in decades.

Journalism. It’s harder than it looks.

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