Missing words in news

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From a New Zealand Herald story about Liberia:

Mr Taylor has promised to leave office on Monday but has sent mixed signals about his intention to leave the country. Yesterday Liberia asked the UN World Court to drop war crimes against him being brought by a Special Court in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

I'm guessing those were war crimes charges that Liberia asked the World Court to drop.

From an AP story about Schwarzenegger's candidacy:

Schwarzenegger's announcement came as a surprise; advisers had said in recent days that he was leaning putting his name on the Oct. 7 election ballot because of opposition from his wife, journalist Maria Shriver.

Leaning putting? Maybe "leaning away from putting"?

I know I've complained about this before, and I know it's not that big a deal. But I do wish more careful editing were being done on news articles before they go live. In these particular cases, it's reasonably clear what was intended, but sometimes leaving out a word can drastically change the meaning of a sentence.

2 Responses to “Missing words in news”

  1. David Moles

    You don’t think they mean to have UN Bomber Command drop actual war crimes on Taylor in a series of daring night-time raids over Monrovia?

    Well, I guess it is hard to make sense of the trailing verb phrase, under that interpretation. So maybe you’re right.

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  2. Rachel Heslin

    Reminds me of a high school play I was involved in. The female lead was a legal secretary who, in one scene, was being chewed out by her boss for missing a word in her transcription. She defended herself by saying it was just one, tiny word — to which he replied, “The word you missed was ‘NOT’!”

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