A New York Times story on Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson’s televised blunder about Aleppo, Syria, included a few blunders of its own.
The story by Alan Rappeport was a write-up of an incident earlier in the day during an interview on MSNBC, wherein columnist Mike Barnicle stumped Johnson by asking him what, if elected, he “would do about Aleppo.”
Johnson admitted he didn’t know what Aleppo is.
“Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor and Libertarian Party presidential nominee, revealed a surprising lack of foreign policy knowledge,” read the Times’ report on the incident.
But the first version of the Times’ own story “misidentified the de facto capital of the Islamic State. It is Raqqa, in northern Syria, not Aleppo,” it said in a correction that soon followed. Another correction was needed because the first correction was wrong, because it misidentified the Syrian capital as Aleppo, a claim the first correction no longer makes.
“An earlier version of the above correction misidentified the Syrian capital as Aleppo. It is Damascus,” read the follow-up correction.
After the interview on MSNBC, Johnson attempted to explain his own mistake in a statement.
“This morning, I began my day by setting aside any doubt that I’m human,” Johnson said. “Yes, I understand the dynamics of the Syrian conflict — I talk about them every day. But hit with ‘What about Aleppo?,’ I immediately was thinking about an acronym, not the Syrian conflict. I blanked. It happens, and it will happen again during the course of this campaign.”
