A little more than a week ago, I received an email from Seattle Times editorial writer Lance Dickie saying that he does, in fact, ride the bus to work regularly. I had said otherwise in this post. I am happy to correct the record here, and have added a correction at the end of the original post.
If you are wondering what inspired Dickie to write me, it was this post. I don't know if he intends to make some corrections of his own, but I think he should.
Finally, my apologies at being so slow to make this correction.
Posted by Jim Miller at September 26, 2005 01:53 PM | Email ThisWhat I then show, using information gathered by Jack Kelly, is that the federal response to Katrina was probably faster -- that's right, faster -- than the federal reponse to previous hurricanes.
Most likely, despite what you have read or seen on TV, the administration performed better than previous administrations. And it is absolutely false to say that the administration "cannot" do something that it did before the storm, during the storm, and immediately after the storm.
When I sent an email ot Dickie gently pointing this out, he complained about a misunderstanding in a previous post -- which he had not objected to at the time. He did not defend his column's wild claim. He has made no correction, and I do not expect to make one, in spite of the fact that he was wrong, and provably so.
By the way, this is standard behavior for the journalists I have dealt with. Unless the error is trivial -- a name misspelled or something similar -- they are extremely reluctant to make corrections.
Posted by: Jim Miller on September 29, 2005 05:30 PM