Maan: A Correction

From the Maan news service's George Hale:

In your post yesterday morning ("A Small Episode That Gets At a Larger Middle East Problem"), you reproduced part of a press release from Israel's settler-led activist group Palestinian Media Watch, criticizing a translation error they found on Maan's English website.

PMW pointed out what its activists considered a "misleading" and "deceptive" passage in an archaically worded statement from a self-proclaimed representative of the armed wing of Fatah, mourning the death days earlier of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

An error in one sentence was indeed ours. As soon as it came to my attention, I had the story re-translated and published a correction. Our procedure for corrections is that of The Associated Press, in keeping with the highest standards of English-language journalism.

Describing the process by which we and the AP correct stories, you quoted an Israeli newspaper saying Maan "removed" the parts which amounted to "deceptive text" from the story. Then we "put the statement back" and informed the reader of the "translation error."

In other words, we issued a correction. It was not an extraordinary event, but you described it as such.

I'll link to Palestinian Media Watch's explanation when I can; their site seems to be down at the moment, or at least not loading.