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A Quiet Year That Was Not QuietDECEMBER 20, 2003 · 13:18
It is customary for this newspaper to run an end-of-year piece in which the desk lists what it got wrong. This year's entry is longer than usual, and begins with the words: we were briefed, in August, that the year would be quieter.
THIS PAGE. IT IS THE ONLY THING WE ARE CERTAIN ABOUT.
( FILE PHOTO )
THIS PAGE. IT IS THE ONLY THING WE ARE CERTAIN ABOUT.
LONDON, December 20 -- The year is ending. The following things happened, and this desk reported them, and in a number of cases reported them late or not at all:
A shuttle came apart. A virus moved between airports by people who were not sick. A war was declared to be over from a carrier deck and continued. Four million people lost power for nine days. An invasion produced a constitution, later, in a different country, and that is a joke this desk is not going to make.
We got the causes wrong on the blackout for four days. We were wrong about the timing of the constitution for a year. In September we published a photograph of a demonstration we had described as small.
Corrections: none so far. Published items are never corrected, they are replaced,
and the replacement keeps the original in the archive, where nobody will look for it.
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