Israel's interior minister, Natan Sharansky, is, by virture of his history as a Soviet dissident and his subsequent successful political career in the Jewish state, one of the most well-known leaders in Israel. Today's New York Times manages to misspell his name as "Sharanksy" four times in one story. The name is spelled correctly in the initial reference and in a photo cutline and twice in the text of the story, but the other references transpose the "s" and the "k." The article with the error runs on page A5 of New York editions.
More Name Trouble: Another article in the international section reports on a technical screw-up at the Times' web site. The error had the effect of disclosing the names of about 24 Iranians involved in a CIA-backed coup in Iran that took place in 1953. The article tells Times readers that the names are now available on "a Web site about international security," but it doesn't name the site. The Times says the international security site had obtained the names from the Times web site, on which "a computer programming error allowed the names to briefly flash on the screen of a slow-running computer."
The first paragraph of the article about the snafu puts an unduly positive spin on the Times's role in the matter. It says: "A Web site about international security has published a list of names from a Central Intelligence Agency document that The New York Times had deleted when it originally posted the report on its own Web site." As the article makes clear lower down, however, The Times did NOT delete the names when it originally posted the document. It may have intended to delete the names; it may have attempted to delete the names but failed to hire a computer staff that was up to the task; it may have deleted the names for those readers not using a "slow-running computer." But if it had in fact deleted the names, the newspaper wouldn't be writing this story about how the names had seeped into the public domain.
The final embarrassment in the same story is that it names the Shah of Iran who took power in the 1953 coup as "Mohammed Riza Pahlevi." The more common spelling of the middle name is Reza; that is the spelling that the Times itself used a while ago in its extensive front-page story reporting that it had obtained the CIA document that its now causing the big fuss. It's unclear why the Times would choose to change its spelling of the Shah's name now.