Simply Dumb

A newspaper based out of an Oklahoma town neglected to report the results of the recent presidential election. And some readers are none too happy about that. The Sapulpa Daily Herald decided not to cover the election, opting instead to mention a quick blurb about most of the county voting for McCain.
But no word about Barack Obama being president-elect.
Residents were upset about the omission, noting that national news was as important to them as local news. And I bet with an election this historic, one would expect even a small newspaper to mention something.
The newspaper insisted that their main focus …read more

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Nebraska recently passed a new law, which local news outlets dutifully covered. Apparently feeling officers is now a felony. Wow, that’s a pretty strong sexual harassment law isn’t it?
Oh, wait. Running from the cops? Ah, you mean fleeing cops! Now it makes more sense. Ah, those crazy proofreaders. Thanks for providing a chuckle for us!
(Apparently someone must’ve caught the error or a reader told them about it, because the article link is no longer working.)
[via]

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Gawker brings us news of perhaps the biggest mainstream media gaffe of the year. Bloomberg financial newswire updated its 17-page obituary of Apple founder Steve Jobs and somehow inadvertently published it. This happened despite the news story bearing markers saying “Hold for Release” and “Do Not Use.”
It’s a pretty common, if not a little morbid, practice for news organizations to prepare obits well in advance of celebrities’ actual death to save time. That’s particularly the case with mammoth opuses like Jobs’ 17-page obit, almost approaching the length of a biographic novel.
In addition to publishing the obit, Bloomberg also accidentally published …read more

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Pass out the Pepto for the editing staff of the world’s most famous newspaper as columnists Bill Kristol and David Brooks racked up two corrections each for Barack Obama columns.
Kristol said there was no recent primary in which the candidate winning the nomination got defeated as badly as Obama did in West Virginia. Obama did catch quite the whooping, losing to Hillary Clinton by more than 41 points. But Kristol was unaware of the Utah primary in which Mitt Romney destroyed John McCain. McCain lost that one by better than 90 percent. He also incorrectly identified California’s Supreme Court …read more

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The Boston Herald is surely drowning in hate mail right now after it retracted a Feb. 2 article accusing the New England Patriots of videotaping the St. Louis Rams’ Super Bowl XXXVI walkthrough.
It turns out no such tape exists. Um, oopsie? The Herald now admits they didn’t the have the tape, see the tape or talk to anyone who had. Which astute readers probably figured out after hearing the tape didn’t exist to begin with. There are nearly 500 comments attached to the online version of their retraction and as you might imagine, they’re almost universally negative.
To make things …read more

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The Los Angeles Times can’t backtrack away from its story implicating Sean “P-Diddy” Combs in a non-fatal attack on Tupac Shakur fast enough. Today the disgraced paper issued a formal retraction of the March 17 story saying associates of Combs staged a 1994 ambush attack on Shakur that led to his nonfatal shooting.
The piece implied that attack took place because Shakur wouldn’t sign with Combs’ Bad Boy Records. The Times relied heavily on now incarcerated James Sabatino as a source, but in today’s retraction said it no longer considers him a credible source. (Gee, ya think?) Sabatino is serving …read more

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I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.
The New York Times has run an expose on former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s last call girl. They have pictures, link to her mySpace page, and give her life story.
Two options here: either the girl wants the publicity or our faithful media has just incredibly unfairly exposed an unwitting girl with an already difficult life to intense public scrutiny.
Either way… sick sick sick. No, I won’t be posting her pictures or mySpace account here. You have to go the smut New York Times for that.
source
Technorati Tags: eliot spitzer,new york …read more

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By now, the Hamas-engineered destruction of the Gaza-Egypt border fence and the resulting uninterrupted flow of Palestinians to and from the Sinai Peninsula is already old news. 
These dramatic events have themselves already overshadowed the temporary power "blackout" which supposedly resulted from Israel shutting off fuel supplies to the territory on January 22.  It was apparent from the start that the ruling powers in Gaza shut down the plants not necessarily for lack of fuel but as a twisted ploy for international sympathy. 
In any event, further evidence is mounting and even some journalists are beginning to catch on.  For …read more

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Despite the seriousness of this article, I couldn’t help but be floored with laughter seeing the picture the New York Times editorial staff chose to complement the story. 
The commander-in-chief sure does look thrilled at the prospect of WWIII, doesn’t he?  This is somewhere between a "come hither" and "tell that old fishing story again" look.
I have no doubt that this picture was chosen with somewhat cruel intentions but, then again, our president does have a tendency to smile at really inappropriate moments.
Take a moment to read the real story "behind the story" below:

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Just recently Simply Dumb featured a story where French President Nicolas Sarkozy had an altercation with American paparazzi.  It seems that one French magazine was happy to use the photos, but only after retouching them to make the leader look thinner.  Yes, they edited out his "love handles."  National pride was at stake, you know?  C’est la vie.

The French magazine Paris Match touched up a photograph of President Nicolas Sarkozy on his US holiday, making his figure more svelte.
Leading news weekly L’Express printed before and after shots, showing a distinct tightening of the area it called poignees d’amour (love handles).
L’Express …read more

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