Let's Start with These Examples

Poor Word Choice:

In an article on how new media is being used in the presidential campaign, Washington Times correspondent Kara Rowland wrote in the print edition of July 1 (one day before Rowland's birthday, as it happens):

...despite some aesthetic differences, the functionality of the two campaigns' official Web sites are virtually identical. Visitors are greeted by pictures of each man looking confidentially out into the distance.

"Confidentially"? Doesn't she mean "confidently"? Or are Barack Obama and John McCain being somehow conspiratorial in they way they look "out into the distance"?

Factual Error:

I do not want to pick on the Washington Times in this first substantive post, but on the same page as Rowland's article (July 1, 2008; page B4) is the jump of an article about a Colorado congressional race, in which one of the candidates is openly gay.

Valerie Richardson reports:

If elected, Mr. [Jared] Polis would be the first openly gay man to win a House race without the benefit of incumbency. Both of the known homosexual men to win House seats - former Rep. Gerry Studds and Rep. Barney Frank, both Massachusetts Democrats - disclosed their sexuality after having first won election to Congress.
Rep. Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin Democrat, was the first openly gay woman to be elected when she won in 1998.

This news will come as a surprise to former U.S. Representatives Steve Gunderson (R-Wisconsin) and Jim Kolbe (R-Arizona), both of whom were re-elected after they revealed their sexual orientation to their constituents. Gunderson was re-elected once after coming out in 1994 (he retired at the next cycle) and Kolbe was not only re-elected several times after coming out in 1996, he became chairman of the foreign operations subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. Kolbe retired after the 2006 election.

Where were the copy editors at the Washington Times?