July 24, 2014

The Economist published a blog post that tried to show negative stereotypes of tourists from different countries are often untrue and unfair.

And by stereotypes, they mean:

Germans? Humourless and demanding. Americans? Loud with garish shorts. Chinese? Rude. Canadians? Actually Canadians are all quite nice. And the Brits? Drunken, violent louts

The original version of the article featured a picture of a young British fellow “on a night out in Mallorca.” This upset the man’s mother, and she contacted the publication to ask that it not tar him with the aforementioned “drunken, violent” brush.

Well, The Economist was only happy to comply. It changed the photo and added this note to the bottom of the story:

Note: This blogpost was originally illustrated with a photograph of a young British man on a night out in Mallorca. His mother called to let us know that he meets none of the negative stereotypes mentioned in the article, so we have replaced the picture with a photo of two innocuous Canadians instead.

As a Canadian, I intend to contact them and object to the labeling of these two true patriots as “innocuous”:

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Craig Silverman (craig@craigsilverman.ca) is an award-winning journalist and the founder of Regret the Error, a blog that reports on media errors and corrections, and trends…
Craig Silverman

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