Corrections and Clarifications is a newspaper-in-progress, an edited compilation of daily corrections to international news printed in English-language newspapers from September 2001 through January 2005. A chronological catalog of repetitive lapses in naming and tanglings of catch-phrases, Corrections and Clarifications hints at a more than incidental relation between news mis-speak and consolidated media interests.
Inspired by the news in October 2001 that the US government had purchased exclusive rights to all satellite imagery of its bombing of Afghanistan, the first volume of Corrections and Clarifications was produced in November 2001 as a particular filter through which to consider the overwhelming consistency of US response to the events of September 11. Rather than claim the wartime prerogative to control the distribution of imagery of the bombing of Afghanistan, the Bush administration opted to simply out-spend any competing media outlet, effectively avoiding (by taking them off the market ) that these images would ever become accessible to the general population. To readers-between-the-lines, this act signified the extent to which the financial power to buy up information replaced even a superficial discourse about ethics of public information or a free press. Since that time, passing through its pages - the well-documented, explicitly condoned abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and then the suppression of that story and the chain of events, memos and dictates leading up to it, not least of which clearly implicate - counter to his excuse of a "faulty memory" - Alberto Gonzales, currently under confirmation hearings for US Attorney General. Simultaneous with that final empty ritual, the 2004 US presidential campaign and election, underwritten by Diebold and other profit-sharing collaborations, culminating in a re-count managed by the same partisan concerns that mis-managed the election, with the ceaseless accompaniment of of Rumsfeld's euphemistic non-speak on the daily progress of US forces in Iraq, of Bush's generic defense of his administration's gross and tragic underestimations of the tragedy of the bombing, siege and continuing ground war in Iraq…
One again witnessed, and continues to witness the disturbing efficiency of the escalation from threat to actual military action, parallel to the unrelenting and legally-enforced calls for unity and unconditional patriotism. If one naively persists in speaking of such things as the American public in this propaganda-induced, revenge-seeking fervor, one wonders what could remain of the sobriety and humility of its originating notions - of popular sovereignty, of voting rights, of a government ultimately responsible and answerable to its people. One wonders, at length, how to speak about the gaping holes in this apparently seamless epic. Using errors and unintentional lapses printed in news media marked a way to use public material itself to expose some of the contributing causes, the convenient prejudices, the unspoken political interests and the barely-disguised agendas.
Following are the introductory statements for the 5th edition of the project, January 2005:
Purely editorial credit, as always, to those who have provided the material for these pages by having seen fit to correct themselves, or having seen themselves fit to correct others; who have sought in some public way to offer apologies or clarifications-to redeem, reveal, revise, retract or shift, to simultaneously claim, deny, and re-attribute blame and responsibility-for the well-documented efforts to apologize for what is being done and for what has already been done, for continuing attempts to un-say what has been said, un-mean what is meant.
Credit at a variety of levels to those processors, middle managers, and ultimate regulators of public information who take it upon themselves to re-name, re-classify, disguise, de-fuse or be de-briefed; who find clever metaphors to obfuscate, euphemize and mystify; who disseminate information and distribute resources according to political structures to coincide with particular economic interests; who agree to use language and numerous, dubious forms of temporary authority to defend, justify, legitimize, cushion, cover and eventually expose the consequences of actions and the submerged structures behind events.
And ultimately who, regardless of intentions, occasionally reveal something, piece by piece, through slips in language and naming systems. Luckily it is not so easy to dispose of the evidence.
Once upon a time, in defense of granting TV/entertainment producers access to US troops in Afghanistan for the production of a reality TV show, Admiral Craig Quigley told reporters: "There's a lot of other ways to convey information to the American people than through news organizations" (February 22 2002). Ignoring for the moment what is at the very least a subtle threat, the insidious, terrifying, and escalating consequences of which unfold daily, expand weekly, multiply yearly. That one cannot argue with such doubletalk is obvious, and is less promising than simply re-framing the contradictions this type of speech invariably produces, coerces, and demands. So this is a newspaper without headlines, allowing such doubletalk to talk to itself. Perhaps what is conveyed unintentionally, and by repetitious mistakes, is significantly more revealing, more historically identifiable, and substantially less conciliatory than it is meant to be.
This is both fortunate and inevitable.
With further acknowledgement, appreciation, and gratitude to readers who regard these corrections and clarifications with as much skepticism as they have the originals.
Corrections and Clarifications
5 volumes, varying dimensions, varying edition sizes, 2001-2005
Produced in conjunction with:
Kunsthaus Zurich, Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Williamsburg Observer, Teufel, and the fifth volume for the conference Klartext! The status of the political in contemporary art and culture.
Distributed by Printed Matter, New York