Aurora Errata

It now appears that when the Aurora shooter's mother said "You have the right person" she was responding to, "Are you the mother of x?" and not "Is x likely to have shot up a movie theatre?" (P.S. I'm not willing to call him "the accused shooter": he said he did it, so he's the shooter until and unless proven otherwise. Political correctness only makes sense to a point.)

In retrospect, this seems much more plausible than the way it was reported. But my point from the previous post remains: too many folks will—with or without this utterance—think the parents "should have done something".

It also reminds me that for every single case where I've had first-hand knowledge of the facts of a newspaper story, the article was incorrect about at least one significant, objective fact. In one case, I remember them getting the defendant's name and age wrong; in another, they listed someone's work address as their home address. Not that I think any of the reporters involved were deliberately lying—the exigencies of publishing a daily paper mean that such fact-checking is too often overlooked (especially as the newspapers die a slow death).

Just a reminder of what we know: Just 'cause it's in the paper doesn't mean it's true.