Times of London Style Guide

, , ,

Is the pope Catholic?: The best tweets about that viral correction from The Times of London

, , ,

Whew!

Glad I wasn't the one who made that mistake!

That is, of course, the reaction of relieved journalists everywhere who didn't — unlike The Times of London — report the pope wasn't Catholic and then have to correct it.

Those of us not facing a barrage of "Do bears poop in the woods?" jokes from readers delighted in The Times' embarrassment and reveled in their misery — in witty bursts of 140 characters or less.

Hey, if it helps, British friends, we were equally amused when The New York Times reported that Moses parted the Dead Sea.

With apologies, we might as well enjoy some of our favorite tweets about this week's viral correction:

 


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, ,

No Popery please, we're British

, ,

From way down under, the North Island of New Zealand to be precise, comes a charming example of how to botch a story on the Anglican Communion. Reporters please note … while they may dress alike and their liturgy may sound alike, and they even have similar job titles … the Anglican Communion is not an English speaking version of the Catholic Church.

Sure there are Anglicans who prattle on about being Catholic and take umbrage at the suggestion they are Protestants — the three branches theory is usually trotted out at this time (which in a nutshell means there are three historic churches Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox and the rest are sects of recent origin.) Nonsense on stilts in my opinion, but I don’t want to be too cranky this early in the week, so I will stick to journalism.

The Fairfax newspaper chain in New Zealand published a story about the visit of the Archbishop of York to New Plymouth. The lede ran:


Please respect our Commenting Policy