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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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I did a bit more digging, and it seems like mostly only the American sources (NBC, VOA, CNBC, Forbes, Time, Fox, WSJ) mentioned India landing ON the South Pole, while other sources (The Guardian, BBC, Al Jazeera, China Daily, CBC) all corroborated what Modi actually said: that they got closer to the South Pole than anyone else and landed NEAR the South Pole.
Both Ouyang's statement and Modi's statement are true: India landed at 69 degrees South (not at the 90 degrees of the pole), but that's also further South than anyone else has achieved yet.
NPR and AP did both get it right, so I guess American journalism isn't completely down the gutter yet... But it's not a good look.
Maybe the ones who got it wrong is because they got their copy from Reuters who got it wrong:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/key-facts-about-indias-chandrayaan-3-moon-mission-2023-08-21/
https://www.reuters.com/science/view-reactions-indias-chandrayaan-3-makes-historic-moon-landing-2023-08-23/
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-counts-down-crucial-moon-landing-2023-08-23/
https://www.reuters.com/science/why-are-countries-racing-moons-heavily-cratered-south-pole-2023-08-23/
(tho these 2 have maps showing all the landing locations)
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/chandrayaan-3-punches-home-indias-lead-budget-space-flights-2023-08-24/
That wouldn't explain such a big gap between American media and everyone else, but it would explain why some journalists might have gotten it wrong. Either way, it's extremely lazy and negligent to just copy Reuters without looking for a primary source, especially when that primary source is literally a massive public figure.
Reuters is a news wire — ie, newspapers pay to “copy” its stories. It’s not lazy. It’s why Reuters exists.
That seems kinda inefficient though. Why do the newspapers exist and we don't just get our news from Reuters directly? I mean, other than the obvious competency issue, but as shown that applied to the newspapers too.
Sure, I'll accept that, but it indicates a complete lack of editorial control and that journalists are being assigned articles they know absolutely nothing about.
Landing on the pole is extremely challenging and, from what I know of their space program, outside of India's current capabilities. That fact should have been caught far before publication, but of the US news sources I could find only AP and NPR caught it.