Fwd: correction

[June Samaras]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Pine <rpine...@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 4:25 AM

May I ask you to circulate a correction to my article in Monday's Irish Times?
I intended to say that the cost to the Greek exchequer of public
sector employees was 50% of total government expenditure. Due to an
oversight, the article stated that 50% of the Greek workforce is
employed in the public sector. The actual figure is believed to be 25%
(although it is impossible to establish this figure definitively). The
error is regretted.
Richard Pine

--
June Samaras
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : june.s...@gmail.com

[akarp...@aol.com]

wow! Just last week we were discussing integrity and responsibility and errors of journalists and media.  Wow!!!  Shoulda had this last Tuesday, lol. 

 

************************************************************************************

"I'm not trying to incite violence, I'm just asking a question." 

"How much is your soul worth?"  

"God is a woman and she giggles at those who think themselves superior to others."

"Please be patient with me... God is not finished with me yet."  

 

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[June Samaras]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 9:50 PM, <akarp...@aol.com> wrote:

wow! Just last week we were discussing integrity and responsibility and errors of journalists and media.  Wow!!!  Shoulda had this last Tuesday, lol. 

==============================================================

Anna

I don't think this is at all a fair comment .

The journalist wrote an article based on the information he had at the time.

When he discovered that the statistics he quoted were inaccurate he issued a correction,
and also e-mailed me personally to make sure that the amendment was passed on to this list .

This is PRECISELY the behaviour of a professional  of " integrity and responsibility " that we
sorely need in the discussion of recent affairs in Greece. In the current maelstrom of
instant opinions,  innuendos , politically motivated rhetoric, spin doctor emollients and 
wild speculations  (in all senses of that word!  <g> ) from all sides, it behooves us to look
closely for whatever credible information we can glean from the chaff.

Admitting to past errors and taking action to correct them is an attitude that
may need to be applied all round, by everyone,  to the situation in Greece.

June S

--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Pine <rpine...@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 4:25 AM

May I ask you to circulate a correction to my article in Monday's Irish Times?
I intended to say that the cost to the Greek exchequer of public
sector employees was 50% of total government expenditure. Due to an
oversight, the article stated that 50% of the Greek workforce is
employed in the public sector. The actual figure is believed to be 25%
(although it is impossible to establish this figure definitively). The
error is regretted.
Richard Pine

[Richard Pine]

June, thank you for your understanding and support.

I am not in fact a journalist, if by 'journalist' one means someone who writes journalism for a living. I do write for a living, but I am principally a literary critic and historian. Having lived in Ireland for forty years, I now live in a country I love: Greece. I write occasionally a 'Letter from Greece' for The Irish Times, and it was on foot of a piece in that paper (which was circulated by June) that I joined this group.

I have lived in Corfu for the past eight years, running the Durrell School of Corfu (www.durrell-school-corfu.org) and writing about Corfiot/Greek matters when I think the readership in Ireland, or elswhere, would be interested in my viewpoint.

June is correct in surmising that, as soon as I was alerted to the error in my most recent piece (incidentally, by an Irish journalist working in Athens), I took steps to correct it, both in relation to this group and by way of a formal correction in yesterday's Irish Times. The mistake was a genuine oversight on my part, which of course I deeply regret. As I did not intend the error, and as I took immediate steps to remedy it, I think the suggestion that I lack either 'integrity' or 'responsibility'is quite unfounded and undeserved.

For anyone interested in my other, literary, work, may I refer members of this group to my profile of Alexandros Papadiamandis (1851-1911) published in the Autumn 2009 issue of the Anglo-Hellenic Review and to my essay 'War, Agon and the Greek Literary Imagination' in R.Pine and E. Patten (eds.), The Literatures of War (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008).

Best wishes

Richard Pine

 

---

From: June Samaras <june.s...@gmail.com>
To: hellas...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, February 25, 2010 4:46:06 PM
Subject: Re: [HELLAS-GREECE:6692] Fwd: correction

[akarp...@aol.com]

June, you are once again assuming too many things about my take on things.

 

It was an error.  I never said it was an intentional error or intentionally done.  Rather, if you read my comments, ""integrity and responsibility and errors".  I neither congratulated the man nor criticized him, I am not in the business of jumping to conclusions about individuals, instead/rather, I look at phenomena.  There's a very big difference between the two. 

 

And the error was not due to lack of info, the email states clearly that it was due to oversight, now once again, there's a big difference.  i.e., the info he had gotten from Greece sounds like it was accurate, but somebody screwed up in the newspaper big time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Thank you very very much,

 

Anna K.

 

************************************************************************************

"I'm not trying to incite violence, I'm just asking a question." 

"How much is your soul worth?"  

"God is a woman and she giggles at those who think themselves superior to others."

"Please be patient with me... God is not finished with me yet."  

 

-----Original Message-----
From: June Samaras <june.s...@gmail.com>

To: hellas...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, Feb 25, 2010 9:46 am
Subject: Re: [HELLAS-GREECE:6692] Fwd: correction

[Richard Pine]

As will have been made very clear from my response of yesterday, Ms Anna K is completely mistaken as to the circumstances from which she infers, so erroneously, her 'facts'. I expected that this would be a constructive group, not a session for back-biting. If anyone 'screwed up big time' it was I, not 'somebody in the newspaper'. I explained all this, firstly in my correction, and secondly in my message of last night. I hope that this is the end of this unpleasant essay in ill-directed spitefulness.

RP

---

From: "akarp...@aol.com" <akarp...@aol.com>
To: hellas...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, February 25, 2010 11:38:22 PM
Subject: Re: [HELLAS-GREECE:6698] Fwd: correction

[Constantine buhayer]

Mr Pangalos, a member of the dynastic oligarchy that has been ruling Greece, has claimed that Germany still has a debt to pay Greece since its WWII atrocities-filled occupation. http://euobserver.com/9/29551/?rk=1.

For a fact, a relative in my village who was sent as forced labour to Germany has told us that Germany had paid Greece for people like him but that Greek polilticians at the time pocketed the money. Does this sound familiar? Are there more cases?

best CB

--
The University of Westminster is a charity and a company limited by
guarantee. Registration number: 977818 England. Registered Office:
309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW, UK.

[michael geokas]

2-26-2010

 

Hi Mr. Buhayer:

 

Thank you for the key information. I do know Mr. Pangalos personally and I am going to help him with our essay on the issue that will be very significant. Thank you and keep in touch.

 

Professor Michael C. Geokas

 

Tel: 001\925\946-0180

FAX: 001\925\946-1987

 

 

[akarp...@aol.com]

Mr. Pine: I don't think my comments were made in spitefulness.  My comments were along the lines of:  last week my students and I were discussing issues in the media and the responsibility, integrity and errors made in the media in their presentation of events.  And then I said, I shoulda had that particular article with me in class.

 

As you are well aware, sources of errors in media are multiple, and so is framing, and inclusion vs. exclusion, blog essays interpreted/presented as journalism (something we have seen of too much lately and you may agree with me on this), etc.  In an intro to soc class, the media tends to be a quite important issue of examination and discusion. 

 

That is all.  As an academic, I reserve the right to comment on events and not the person.  I also reserve the right of free speech without running the risk of being accused of acting out of spite.  I have neither time nor energy for spite, altho I seem to have too much time for things I shouldn't have. 

 

I'm not goig to apologise to you because there was no inuslt to you as a person, I did not accuse you of anything.  So, I will end here.  This stupidity of a small tiny thing has gone on for too long and too many emails and too much energy and time.  Actually, I'm already looking back and chuckling--but that is of course my style, lol.  I have to often remind myself that this list is not mostly academic/academics but rather people who have a real stake in the issues discussed--and this, is not an insult either, at least not for the non-academics ::)) 

 

AK

[akarp...@aol.com]

Mr. Pine: one other thing I should have added is: as someone who occasionally tries to write things, I am fully aware of the "little" mistakes along the way that somehow are not so little but that is precisely all that they are.  If it makes you feel any better or sure of my "humanity", not too long ago I sent in the penultimate draft of something I was writing and it was published.  When I read it, my eyes bulged as I realized my error and had the choice: crying or laughing.  I laughed.  Only bcz it was the healthier thing to do, lol.  Did we discuss this in class as one of the sources of error?  Of course.  Did my students laugh?  I told them they had better laugh along with me at one of the sources of error in the media (especially since I was handing out the grades in a couple of days--I assure you, they all had a hearty laugh and even the napping students woke up to laugh with us::))  ). 

 

************************************************************************************

"I'm not trying to incite violence, I'm just asking a question." 

"How much is your soul worth?"  

"God is a woman and she giggles at those who think themselves superior to others."

"Please be patient with me... God is not finished with me yet."  

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Pine <rpine...@yahoo.com>
To: hellas...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, Feb 26, 2010 3:37 am
Subject: Re: [HELLAS-GREECE:6699] Fwd: correction

[Constantine buhayer]

Hello Mr Geokas
how can he help? Mr Pangalos has already offended the Germans and EU protocol before, so he might not be the best person for reparations:
In 1993, Pangalos was deputy foreign minister under Papandreou II, when Greece needed all the friends it could get on the Macedonian question. Unfortunately he said:
"Before, Germany was a giant with clay feet, and now it is like Pantagruel, the giant of Rabelais, with a bestial force and a child's brain". A basic tenet of EU membership is that officials never publicly insult a partner country. Mr Pangalos ignored protocol in attacking the EU paymaster.
www.independent.co.uk/.../greek-outburst-enrages-germans-1506948.html <http://www.independent.co.uk/.../greek-outburst-enrages-germans-1506948.html>

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