I’ve written before about the decline in simple journalistic standards and fact checking at the newspaper which purports to be Britain’s 'newspaper of record'.

The Times comment/editorial section, has in the last few years, been more interested in acting as the last remaining propaganda outlet of British neo-conservatism, than in getting simple facts right.

In today's paper there is a comment piece entitled 'The Pope is deeply suspect in Jewish eyes', written by Stephen Pollard.

You would have thought that an article attacking the Pope (pictured above), would at least get the man's real name right. It doesn't.

The article refers to the Pope as 'Thomas Ratzinger'.

His name is Joseph Alois Ratzinger.

It beggars belief that no one who dealt with this article knew the Pope‘s real name or bothered to check it.

But then again, judging by the comment/editorial section's previous form on getting facts right, perhaps not.

(Hat tip for spotting this one to Martin Meenagh).

UPDATE. Oh dear. It's not been a very good day for neocon writers at The Times has it?

As David Lindsay says, lets hope he takes the rest of Policy Exchange and the Henry Jackson Society with him as he leaves Parliament.

FURTHER UPDATE: The Times has amended the article in question so that the Pope is now 'Joseph Ratzinger'. But the erroneous information highlighted by Martin Meenagh
in the comments section below is still up there.

AND THERE'S MORE....
What a day of unmitigated embarrassment at Britain's 'newspaper of record'. The excellent Guido Fawkes reports:

Why has a regular Times T2 columnist had a piece called ‘How Not To Spend It’, which was due to be published today, pulled by The Times. The reason? Might be sensitive, given MPs spending habits. The columnist?
Could it be that the columnist is Sarah Vine? Also known as Mrs Gove.....

FURTHER UPDATE.
Neo-cons not very happy about this blog post, it seems.

I receive a sneering email overnight from 'anonymous' to draw my attention to a blog post of last night by Pollard's little pal and fellow neocon smear merchant Oliver Kamm in which he accuses me (falsely) of using quotations from Cicero and Mahatma Gandhi from the internet without checking them. You can imagine the exchange of emails which preceded the blog post, can't you?

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