Forty to one are not good odds, though they are better than James “Buster” Douglas faced in his epic upset of Mike Tyson.
Forty to one is a great reduction, however, when it refers to a correction in civilian deaths. Confederate Yankee‘s Bob Owens has the coverage of the pre- and post-reduction story of today’s “massacre” at Houla (special kudos to his post title).
In this case, for once I find that I cannot fault the media … necessarily. It seems to me that they were a victim of the ’round-the-clock, 24-hour news cycle. They printed what was put out by a government official and then corrected it. I cannot fault them for that, but can point that we have all become potential victims of poor information or slanted sources in this age of instant information. Basically, Houla is the small-scale, time-compressed equivalent of the Jenin “massacre.”