Last week I reported that the New York Times, one of the most respected pieces of journalism in the country, had printed some pretty jarring mistakes in an article about technology, all of the blunders concerning video games. It appears that they have caught on to this fact, having issued a correction:

“An article in Business Day on Friday about favorite gadgets of executives referred incorrectly to the video game Gran Turismo 5. It has not yet been released, and thus is not a best-selling game. The article also referred imprecisely to the game Halo 3. It is the first game in the Halo series designed for the Xbox 360; the earlier games, though playable on the Xbox 360, were designed for the original Xbox. The chip in the Xbox 360 also was misidentified. It has a Xenon chip, not a Cell processor. And the article also misstated the price of the Sony PlayStation 3. The PlayStation 3 starts at $399, not $299.”

It’s good that they did the right thing in making sure their mistakes were corrected, and I know that no one is perfect, but the whole mess just left a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe I’m reading into this a little too much, but the message I got from the snafu was “We don’t care about video games, and they’re not even worth accurately writing about.” After all, the slip-ups didn’t just get past the writer, but the editor as well. It’s probably not a good idea for any news outlet to alienate an entire subculture.

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