Thursday has proven to be a cringe-inducing day for foreign policy wonks.
In an article calling out Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson for not being familiar with the Syrian city of Aleppo, The New York Times twice misidentified major cities in the war-torn Middle Eastern nation and issued two corrections as a result.
The first noted that the original story had mistakenly identified Aleppo, rather than Raqqa, as “the de facto capital of the Islamic State.” Aleppo actually is the epicenter of the country’s refugee crisis.
The Times then added a subsequent correction to that correction, explaining that the initial clarification misidentified Aleppo as Syria’s capital. The capital of Syria is Damascus.
Johnson had been skewered by the press for asking “What is Aleppo?” in response to a question on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
See the Times’ rare double correction in full below:
