Doug Gets It Wrong Yet Again

[doncoulter]

Doug Bower reported the following on his blog last night:

The violence creating an atmosphere of insecurity in the capital city of Guanajuato is coming increasingly closer to the downtown historic district. Early Saturday morning (11/27/10) a group of seven men assaulted young people who were walking near el Teatro Principal y la plazuela Jorge Negrete. The victims were beaten and though police responded, two of the police were severly injured requiring medical treatment.

Doug's report is a rough translation of the first paragraph of an article from the Correo newspaper. Formerly, Doug used Google Translate to render such articles into English. It appears that in this case he added a few tweaks of his own?resulting in two errors in the final sentence quoted above.

First, the original article does not say that ?the victims were beaten.? It says that one of them was struck or hit. Second, the original article does not say that two police officers were ?severly? (or even severely) injured. Rather than characterize the injuries, it describes them in some detail. I would call the injuries minor. Read the article and judge for yourself.

I certainly do not wish to minimize the seriousness of street crime in Guanajuato, which indeed appears to be on the rise. A friend of mine was recently assaulted here. Such crime concerns me; I hope it concerns everyone. However, the first duty of anyone reporting on such crime is to be accurate. Exaggerating the amount or severity of street crime is alarmist and irresponsible.

Meanwhile, Doug?s previous blog post, regarding the number of children murdered in Mexico, remains uncorrected.

Don Coulter
?Reading Doggie Bow-Wow So You Don?t Have To?