Last month, the New York Times published an article about Prime Minister Mark Carney securing a majority government. In the article, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is quoted denouncing the members of his party who had crossed the floor to join Carney’s Liberals. “If these turncoats have any shred of integrity left, they should resign their seats tonight and run in a by-election tomorrow,” the paper reported Poilievre saying in a speech in March.
Except Poilievre never said that. Quietly, more than two weeks later, a correction was added at the bottom of the article noting that it had been updated “after the Times learned that a remark attributed to Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, was in fact an A.I.-generated summary of his views about Canadian politics that A.I. rendered as a quotation. The reporter should have checked the accuracy of what the A.I. tool returned.”
That reporter was Matina Stevis-Gridneff, the New York Times’ Canada bureau chief, and it appears her error was flagged not by editors but by a keen-eyed reader named Iris, who replied to Stevis-Gridneff’s Bluesky post on April 15, the day after the article had been published, to ask where the quote came from. “I have looked up the speeches he gave in March and can’t find him saying this,” Iris wrote.
Quietly, more than two weeks later, a correction was added
Typical for the NYT tbh.
The only reaction of theirs that’s MORE common when they get caught literally and provably lying is to keep insisting that they were right no matter what.
Wow that goes beyond a simple hallucination error - because it’s a false quote attributed to a real person it’s libel. The editor should be fired.
Typical for the NYT tbh.
The only reaction of theirs that’s MORE common when they get caught literally and provably lying is to keep insisting that they were right no matter what.
Note this was the Canada Bureau Chief who did this, not like, an intern.
Sloppy and awful in addition to fascist supporting.
the times, like the wapo, has enshittified itself into irrelevance. sad legacy for these two stalwarts of journalism.
Yep. Like the rest of corporate news they were unwilling and unable to address the failures of 2016.
It’s dead, Jim.