In a November 27, 2009 article, The New York Times quoted Becky O’Malley as saying:

“We make a serious effort to get most words spelled right in the headlines, which we don’t always achieve,” Ms. O’Malley said. “And we of course never knowingly print something that we know to be untrue. But, frankly, there are things we don’t know.”

Translated, this means that the only information found in the pages of the Daily Planet that its Executive Editor and Publisher is willing to stand behind is the correct spelling of the words in its headlines.

This closely corresponds to our own findings at www.DPWatchDog.com, for although we have uncovered every manner of journalistic malfeasance at the Daily Planet, we have yet to find a single word misspelled in its headlines.  Kudos.

However, although we have elsewhere expressed a low regard for O’Malley’s intellect, we do not believe O’Malley when she asserts she would “never knowingly print something that we know to be untrue.”  We think she is being too clever by half.  Here are just a few random examples, culled from elsewhere on this website, of “facts” she must either have known to be untrue when she published them or should have known:

• Millions of Palestinians have been killed by Israelis.
• Zionists conspired with Hitler and Eichmann to create the Holocaust.
• Israel invaded Arab countries in 1947 rather than being itself invaded.
• Berkeley is at its maximum 2-4% Jewish.
• The H1N1 virus was genetically engineered by profit seeking drug companies.

If she could not fact check these, along with countless other examples, then perhaps the newspaper business is not her true calling.  If she claims poverty and staff layoffs, could she not use simple common sense, and not publish items that stink to high heaven on their face?  Alternatively, could she not bring in interns from UCB’s School of Journalism to do rudimentary fact checking?

O’Malley is no genius, to be sure.   But she is not that dumb, and so we would ask that she stop pretending to be so.