CBC Global Header Navigation

 
CBCnews

Blatchford on Colvin: Corrected Version?

Given the lively discussion that ensued in response to this post on last Saturday's column by Christie Blatchford, the following correction -- which appeared in the print edition of today's Globe and Mail, and has been added to the online version of the piece -- seems worthy of note: 

Comments released to a parliamentary committee this week about Afghanistan's Kandahar prison that the facility seemed "to be in reasonably good condition" and that inmates got "enough food" were misattributed to Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin. In fact, the comments were made by an unknown third party and quoted by Mr. Colvin in an e-mail. Mr. Colvin made several trips, not one, outside the military base in Kandahar. Incorrect information appeared in a column Nov. 28.

It's probably also worth pointing out that, at the time that Blatchford's column appeared, the "comments" had not, in fact, been "released to a parliamentary committee" -- that, of course, didn't happen until Wednesday. How Blatchford managed to get a preview of the material is still unknown, as, for that matter, is the reason behind the curiously passive voice of this particular correction. (It was, after all, not the committee that "misattributed" the quotes in question.) 

Also left as a not-actually-all-that-difficult exercise for the (re-)reader is the second part of the correction, which notes that Colvin "made several trips, not one, outside the military base in Kandahar" without mentioning that Blatchford's contention that, "by the kindest reckoning, [Colvin] would have spent a grand total of a half-day outside the wire in Kandahar," formed the basis of her thesis that he "had no visceral sense of who it was Canadian troops were detaining." Nor, apparently, does anyone "regret the error", unless that phrase has become such a cliche in corrections that it's now assumed that it goes without saying.