Embarrassing inaccuracies...expected?

"Q. What did you think of your New Yorker profile?

A.I think, as most profiles go, two-thirds was accurate. There were so many inaccuracies, including the date of my divorce from my wife, which drove her crazy because she tried to correct it and I tried to correct it twice. It was a little embarrassing to her because it indicated she was divorced after she was remarried. That was symptomatic to a lot of issues. I thought there were a lot of good things in it, but it was written like an arithmetic program: It’s one plus two plus three plus four plus five plus six plus nine plus seven minus two. What it failed to capture in my judgment was my real passion for the work that I do."

This interview of Mort Zuckerman by The New York Observer shows just how important editing is.

Talk about some major inaccuracies...

There were three things about his statment that really bother me:

The first is that both Zuckerman and his ex-wife attempted to correct the information. No go.

The second is how incredibly boring the story sounds. I sure don't want to pick up a profile about a person whose work interests me only to find it to read like a math problem. No way.

The third, and most troubling to me, is that the first words out of his mouth are "I think, as most profiles go, two-thirds was accurate." As most profiles go?!?!? He expects it to be inaccurate. He expects a full third of the story to be inaccurate. That's a lot of inaccuracies.

Isn't it our job to make sure that these stories are accurate? Was somebody not doing their job or did nobody care? It's ok - profiles are always a little inaccurate. No. Not ok.