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<\/a>\nOn December 1, 2020, I submitted a corrections request<\/a> for errors in Britta Lokting\u2019s November 18, 2020 magazine feature, The Wild Horse Wars<\/a><\/em>, including nine photographs by Melissa Farlow from a 2009 National Geographic feature (Mustangs: Spirit of the Shrinking West<\/a><\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Farlow\u2019s photos are striking, but they\u2019re not of wild horses on public lands today, as Lokting’s captions purport. Eight out of nine images are of captive horses and all of Farlow\u2019s photos are old \u2014 13 years, on average, according to her web site and National Geographic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two photographs are from the same 2007 wild horse roundup; six others were photographed around the same time at two different horse sanctuaries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Farlow’s cover image (captioned \u201cWild horses thunder across a desert in Nevada,\u201d<\/em> in the Washington Post) and photo 2 (\u201cA herd in the Nevada desert.\u201d) <\/em>are from the same September 1, 2007 roundup in Jackson Mountains, Nevada, where 900 horses were stampeded by helicopters into a trap site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One hundred horses died after being shipped to the Palomino Valley holding facility outside Reno, according to helicopter contractor Dave Cattoor. Those horses lost their freedom \u2014 some, their lives \u2014 a long time ago. None are running wild in the Nevada desert today. That\u2019s a lie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Five other photos (3,4,5,6 & 7) were taken at the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros (ISPMB) in South Dakota. The blue-eyed mare was photographed there on June 17, 2007 by Farlow, impounded along with 900+ other horses in 2016, relocated to an Oregon rescue and confirmed euthanized in early 2017 from a broken leg. Lokting\u2019s photo caption in The Wild Horse Wars <\/em>refers to her as: \u201cA mare named Shoshone in South Dakota.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Another ISPMB yearling photographed by Farlow on May 21, 2008 was still \u201cA yearling with a shaggy, full winter coat in South Dakota<\/em>\u201d nearly 13 years later according to Lokting\u2019s photo caption. Same deal with two IPSMB stallions, a horse standing in the moonlight and photo 8, which was taken at a horse rescue in Northern California. Lokting\u2019s captions make them out to be wild free-roaming horses today. That’s false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Below is an edited version of my second corrections email to the Washington Post, asking editors to fix the captions, or remove the images. Some of it repeats what you\u2019ve just read and some of it is new. I hope you\u2019ll read it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n December 29, 2020 I spent several days fact-checking nine photos by Melissa Farlow in The Wild Horse Wars<\/em>, all from a February 2009 National Geographic photo gallery on the photographer\u2019s website. A Nat Geo representative confirmed that all nine photos were shot between June 2, 2007 and August 23, 2008, making them between 12 and 14 years old. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo captions in The Wild Horse Wars<\/em> misrepresent the images as wild free-roaming horses on public lands today. That is false. The captions must be fixed or the images removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cover photo and photo 2 were taken at a wild horse round-up on September 1, 2007, when 900 horses were stampeded into a trap, chased by helicopters. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) then shipped them to a holding facility, where 100 of them died, according to Dave Cattoor of Cattoor Livestock Roundup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Images 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 were photographed at two wild horse sanctuaries where a majority of the horses were bred and born. Photo 3 \u2014 the blue-eyed mare \u2014 was confirmed euthanized in early 2017. She died in Oregon, not in South Dakota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Horses stampeded into traps and removed are not wild and free-roaming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Horses at horse sanctuaries are not wild and free-roaming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dead horses are not wild and free-roaming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They were not wild and free-roaming when those photos were taken. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They were not wild and free-roaming when \u201cThe Wild Horse Wars\u201d was published on November 18, 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s hard to understand why the Washington Post would buy outdated images from National Geographic \u2014 then strip away their truths and replace them with misinformation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Cover photo and photo 2 captions replace an absolute truth (that the horses are running for their lives while being chased by a helicopter) with a fiction (the horses are thundering across sensitive desert ecosystems just because<\/em>). That fiction pushes Washington Post readers toward agreement with the drastic solutions that The Wild Horse Wars<\/em> advocates (round-ups, ovariectomies, slaughter) when they would otherwise express opposition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are other copyediting errors that need fixing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Washington Post has a duty to report the truth (\u201cDemocracy Dies in Darkness<\/em>\u201d). It doesn\u2019t allow the truth to be bent just because the subjects are voiceless animals. The captivating photos and their new captions may pull readers in, but they\u2019re good-looking fakes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Post\u2019s website invites corrections from readers. I\u2019m a fact-checker and journalist on wild horse politics and public lands policies. I submitted a request on December 1, 2020 for The Wild Horse Wars<\/em>, flagging nine different errors, including the age of nine photos. I emailed it to the features editor (name removed), the writer (Ms. Lokting) and the corrections email address, along with data and documentation from the BLM website (Lokting\u2019s primary source) and other government sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Star Tribune News research staffer notified me that my request had been passed on to editors the day I sent it. No one has responded. What happened to it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Washington Post\u2019s wild-horse reporting has been error-filled for years. The corrections requests and documentation I\u2019ve submitted during that time would fix the most egregious errors, but no one responds and errors continue to be made. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Who is fact-checking reporters? Are the invitations to submit corrections genuine? Does the Washington Post care about reader input as its website proclaims? About shining a light on the darkness of disinformation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I look forward to a response to my December 1, 2020 submission (also attached) and this present request. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you. Vickery Eckhoff Please leave a comment below,<\/strong> follow me @viglet on twitter and read other Daily Pitchfork posts pushing mainstream news outlets to correct their errors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fact-checking The New York Times: Sources claim wild horse damage, but photos show cattle did it.<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>(12\/12\/20)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fact-checking the New York Times: Maps and data expose cattle, not wild horses, as looming crisis.<\/a> <\/strong>(12\/15\/20)<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n Misreporting on wild horses is an out-of-control problem \u2014 and Washington Post editors are locked in conflict over fixing errors or letting them stand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[98],"tags":[27,160,83,155,23],"class_list":["post-1608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corrections_watch","tag-bureau-of-land-management","tag-fact-checking-2","tag-public-lands-ranching","tag-washington-post","tag-wild-horses"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Screen-Shot-2021-01-18-at-3.02.56-PM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p54Vzk-pW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1608"}],"version-history":[{"count":52,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1704,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions\/1704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Farlow-Nat-Geo-Photo-1-912007-1-1024x668.jpg\")
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Subject: Photography in The Wild Horse Wars<\/em>
Dear Editors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sincerely,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New York, NY
NOTE: the editor of the Washington Post Magazine contacted me on January 4th with a truly insignificant cosmetic fix. He avoided discussion of the other errors. I responded with a letter on January 6. It remains unanswered and for that, I give the Washington Post four Pinocchios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Fact-checking 9 errors in the Washington Post, Seattle Times and Houston Chronicle<\/a><\/strong> <\/strong>(12\/12\/20)
Fact-checking errors and omissions in the New York Time<\/a><\/strong> (12\/12\/20)<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Facebook\"](\"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/social\/regular\/48x48\/facebook.png\" "\\"Share")
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