Further to Chavez and Chomsky

It's worth pointing out that one of the "facts" making up the famous story of President Hugo Chavez's recommendation to read Chomsky was ... well, made up.

It was repeated in all the stories I saw. Here's one example: in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Carlin Romano wrote:

Never one to get his facts completely straight, Chavez held a post-speech news conference in which he expressed regret that he had not met Chomsky ... before the author's death, sentencing the still-quite-living 77-year-old emeritus professor to a new form of state execution.

As the resourceful David Sketchley points out, the original story is somewhat different. Reuters reported that:

The dark-skinned, mixed race leader told New Yorkers to read Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain as well as modern thinkers like Noam Chomsky and John Kenneth Galbraith, lamenting he could not meet Galbraith before he died in April at age 97.

Sketchley assumes there are only three possible explanations for Romano's actions, which he puts to the author:

1. You have lifted your interpretation from another source without checking its veracity for yourself.
2. You have mistranslated Chavez' words.
3. You have 'edited' Chavez' words yourself in order to make him look stupid.

"Whichever explanation is correct" he adds "it is a scandal on a par with the NYT Jason Blair affair." Of course, it will receive equal attention in the corporate media and blogosphere, won't it?