Friday, February 03, 2006

THE OPPOSITE OF EXAGGERATION
The official Associated Press headline:

Dozens Dead After Egyptian Ship Disaster

The official first paragraph:
CAIRO, Egypt -- An Egyptian passenger ferry carrying around 1,300 people, mostly Egyptian workers returning from Saudi Arabia, sank in the Red Sea overnight. Coast Guard vessels pulled dozens of bodies from the water Friday and rescued 100 survivors from lifeboats, officials said.
Dozens? Well, I suppose so, if you think of it as one hundred dozen.


UPDATE: Behold the power of The Rob Log. Shortly after calling the AP out for mockery, they changed the header to a slightly less inaccurate "Dozens of Bodies, Survivors in Red Sea." It's still a case of minimalism at work, but I applaud their responsiveness to this blog.