Good, Bad, and Ugly
Reader reaction to Reuters news
Was religion relevant?
Jakarta introduces women-only trains to avoid groping
JAKARTA (Reuters Life!) – Women-only train carriages were launched this week in Jakarta in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, in an attempt to avert groping and sexual harassment on packed commuter trains.
Your editors are showing their anti-Islamic bias again.
The first paragraph gratuitously labels Indonesia “the world’s most populous Muslim nation.” This is irrelevant to the story, unless you wanted to deliberately link “Muslims” with “groping”. Why else would you include those words?
When those same trains first came out in Japan, I bet you didn’t label Japan “the mainly Shinto Buddhist nation”. Nor, later on, India “the mainly Hindu nation”. Last time you ignored my letter on this issue. Perhaps I should refer my comments to the Press Council?
David B.
If we felt Indonesia’s religion was somehow relevant to this story, we should have made the reason clear to our readers. In this case, we did not: GBU Editor
Is that what she said?
I am a Bosnian citizen. Please, before airing a video, make sure you have all your facts accurate.
The Bosnian woman shown in the video did not say what the translation made her say. Perhaps she said it later during the interview, but not when the translation is played.
The woman said something to the effect of “We are afraid that the Hague will prolong the hearing and that the process will take too long…”
The woman did say that, but we clipped the wrong sound bite to the translation. We redid the piece so the bite and the translation matched: GBU Editor
UPDATE 1-Amkor Q2 profit rises; to cut 600 jobs in Q3:
There is an error in this report. Amkor reported Profits to RISE sequentially 4% to 6% and you folks reported it to fall sequentially!
Negro spirituals
Chuck Berry won’t sing for ‘Johnny’ in US election
”In the ’50s there were certain places we couldn’t ride on the bus,” Berry said. “And now there is a possibility of a black man being in White House. Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last,” he said, quoting the words of a Negro spiritual song famously invoked by assassinated civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King Jr.
I can only hope that the reporter and editors on this story are Brazilian and therefore unfamiliar with how archaic and offensive the term “Negro” is considered here in the U.S. Seriously.
Kate
We did not use the term “Negro,” we used the term “Negro spiritual,” which is still in wide use. You can go to negrospiritual.com, you may order numerous recordings of Negro spirituals from amazon.com, and so on. And, in a forum which attracts vocal and varied opinions about our news content daily, I believe yours was the only e-mail we received about this subject: GBU Editor
The term Negro is very active in use in the USA: as in the United Negro College Fund (www.uncf.org/), and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. NAACP is also very much alive in the USA: it stands for The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It’s how you call a person, the attitude of your speech, that makes a word offensive, or simple descriptive.
Lost in translation
Your Brazilian site has a wrong automatic translator. This month is MAY, and your Brazilian website translates”may” as a word that in Brazil means: “MAY I go to the bathroom?” In English, this words are the same, but not in Portuguese.
Renato
Your Brazilian website is incorrectly translating dates from English. The date “Monday, May 12 2008″ is currently being translated as “segunda-feira, 12 de pode de 2008″, which mistranslates “May” (“maio” in Portuguese) to “pode”, which means “may” in the sense of “can, is able to”.
Fabio
Understandably, lots of people noticed that one. We’ve fixed the problem: GBU Editor
Another meaning…
Young Pennsylvania voters take a shine to Obama
I think a news headline about taking a “shine” to a man of color is considered in poor taste, at best.
Mark S.
Please reseach Black folklore and historical use of the term “Shine” that your use in the same sentence with Sen Obama. I think you will find it, if not inappropriate, at least a pretty odd choice of words.
Tony R. Several readers pointed this out to us. There are vast numbers of people who do not know the slang meaning of the word: “Disparaging and offensive. A black person.”
When our editors became aware of it, the headline was changed: GBU Editor
I must admit that I’d not heard ‘shine’ used in this context before.
Halting vs braking?
Bush climate plan said too little, too late
On Wednesday, President George W. Bush unveiled a plan to halt the growth of U.S. emissions by 2025, toughening a previous goal of braking the growth of emissions by 2012. The United States and China are the top emitters.
I don’t understand how allowing oneself an extra 13 years to achieve what appears to be the same goal is “toughening” it. Is this a typo, or am I misreading it?
Curt H.
Several readers were confused by this. The intended distinction was between HALTING and BRAKING – that is, between stopping and merely slowing – but it doesn’t seem to have been clear enough: GBU Editor
Very heavy grapes and gems?
Engagement ring ends up gone with the wind
Hajji, of Hackney, east London, had concealed a 6,000-pound engagement ring inside a helium balloon. The idea was that she would pop the balloon as he popped the question.
A 6,000-pound ring?
Dale M.
Accountant loses 300,000 pound grape lawsuit
Those of us who are not on your monetary system read this headline to be refer to litigation rergarding the largest grape ever grown. £ would have been clearer and would have saved space.
Steve S. These versions of the two stories above appeared on our UK site, where most readers would tend to understand that pound referred to price, and not weight. On reuters.com, the figures were converted to dollars. Having said that, to American eyes those references do look kind of funny: GBU Editor
Why does Rueters continue to claim that the number of US soldiers ‘killed’ in Iraq, includes those who have died of reasons other than hostile action? If a soldier dies of heart failure, as a number have, have they been ‘killed’ in Iraq? Over 10 percent of the US deaths have been due to accident, illness or suicide. Either Reuters is too lazy to differentiate between combat deaths and other deaths, or they wish to further and agenda by pumping up the numbers to mislead their readers into thinking the effort is more costly in lives. They might also mention that even though the US military is involved in ongoing conflicts, the death rate is comparable to the death rate of the military under the Carter admin due to improved equipment, training and safety measures. Don’t use their sacrifice for your own agenda. Just tell the truth.
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Resident Mediafile Expert
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