New York Times Issues Correction For Lynn Hirschberg's Story On M.I.A.

After a condescending New York Times profile that ran in the paper’s magazine over the weekend, prolific artist M.I.A. started a multimedia attack against writer Lynn Hirschberg. Besides sharing Hirshberg’s phone number via Twitter she also unleashed the track “I’m A Singer (Haters)” on her record label’s website. In response to these recent developments, the newspaper published an official correction of the story, admitting that certain quotes were presented out of order. Read it below.

The cover article in The Times Magazine on Sunday profiled the singer and political activist M.I.A. While discussing her efforts to draw attention to the civil war in her home country, Sri Lanka, she was quoted as saying: “I wasn’t trying to be like Bono. He’s not from Africa — I’m from there. I’m tired of pop stars who say, ‘Give peace a chance.’ I’d rather say, ‘Give war a chance.’ The whole point of going to the Grammys was to say, ‘Hey, 50,000 people are gonna die next month, and here’s your opportunity to help.’ And no one did.”

While M.I.A. did make those remarks, she did not make the entire statement at the same point in the interview, or in the order in which it was presented.

The part that begins, “The whole point of going to the Grammys,” up to the end of the quotation, actually came first. The part that begins, “I wasn’t trying to be like Bono,” and ends, “Give war a chance,” came later in the same interview. The article should have made clear that the two quotations came from different parts of the interview.

Source: The Daily Swarm