Times and AZ Republic cover up their Irish problem and other mistakes

In his spirited column about the New York Times and Alice Walker's anti-Semitism, Richard Cohen complains that the Times refuses to admit a mistake, interviewing Walker and not being shocked by her bigotry.  He just discovered that?  The Times fired their mistake department back in 2017 and even when they had a Public Editor some "mistakes" were off limits, eg, "OP-ED mistakes are not within the purview of the Public Editor."

Some years ago OP-ED columnist Bob Herbert wrote an egregious, error-filled column that blamed Irish immigrants who [allegedly] refused to fight to free poor blacks for the New York City draft riots.   Herbert neglected the part about the commanding generals at the pivotal Civil War Battle of Gettysburg being  Irish Americans,  George Gordon Meade and John Reynolds.   He also left out the part about New York City's Irish Brigade committing mass suicide on the eve of Emancipation while storming the stonewall at Fredericksburg,  12/13/1862.   In fact, the people who incited the riots were Americans with perfectly American pedigrees.  The one immigrant who was part of the upper-class cabal opposing Lincoln wasn't Irish.   The Times has never apologized for Mr. Herbert's nativist column or even published a letter of complaint.

Likewise,  the Times has never addressed it's problematic interview with James McPherson where it failed to challenge McPherson on the nativism and anti-Catholicism in his Battle Cry of Freedom and For Cause and Comrades,  where McPherson claimed immigrants were skulkers who gained "inglorious visibility" through late war enlistments.  How did the Times and Professor McPherson miss the part where immigrants won a quarter of the Civil War Medals of Honor and that these awards are highly correlated with enlistments, indicating a high immigrant presence in the Union army and navy throughout the war -- immigrants from literally all over the world.

The Times isn't alone in refusing to acknowledge mistakes.   The Arizona Republic has the same flawed blind spot.   It too endorsed Professor McPherson and his Battle Cry of Freedom and casually published Clarence Page's nativist column that blamed the Irish and their gangs for slavery not going away by itself.  Apparently Mr. Page believes that without immigration the South would have never seceded and there wouldn't have been a Civil War where the Meades and Reynoldses won the biggest battle.   No apologies from the Arizona Republic or Mr. Page.