SLAYER Rules The House Of Representatives

February 20, 2007

Freelance UK reports: The New York Times was humiliated on Friday (Feb. 16) when its lead about U.S. politicians debating Iraq appeared on its web site captioned by a photo of headbanging heavy metal fans.

Times' readers will know that the House of Representatives has been divided over President Bush's escalation plan, but they won't know the congressmen are fans of rock group SLAYER.

That was the impression from the paper however, after a photo of bearded and tattooed men moshing in Manhattan captioned its story: "A divided house denounces plan for more troops." [Check out the screenshot at BoingBoing.net.]

According to the Daily Background, which broke news of the blunder, the offending image was displayed for at least half an hour to thousands of visitors to the NYT online, before it was taken down.

The photograph, reportedly taken at a SLAYER concert by a Times photographer on Thursday, was intended for the paper's music review section, due for publication in Saturday's edition.

Web analysis services report the normally-well-respected Times boasts an impressive 1,000 visitors to its website every minute — a figure that excludes its new breed of rock music fans.

The Daily Background reflected on the blunder: "It seems that editors could hardly have chosen a more inappropriate photograph to illustrate the sombre Congressional debate over the war in Iraq which lasted most of this week."

(Thanks: UVImpaler)

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