Correction: We Were Correct

This morning's New York Times provides the latest installment in the saga of reporter-cum-memoirist Alan Feuer: an Editors' Note reports that the paper "asked its Baghdad bureau staff to recheck" an April 14, 2003 story by Feuer after Feuer claimed, in his book about war reporting, to have fudged facts in that piece. On reinspection, the Times says, the facts--a name and an age--check out, though Feuer did get another name wrong in the piece. That's consistent with the Times' reaction when the Observer first asked about the contents of Feuer's memoir: reporter Alan Feuer can be trusted; it's the memoirist Alan Feuer (or his alter ego, "T.R."), who embellishes stuff. Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis said via e-mail that the review of Feuer's Iraq work was limited to the one article in question. "In the midst of covering a war, it is hard to take time forthat kind of research in the absence of specific reports of possible error," Ms. Mathis wrote.