NY Times Report on Johnson Aleppo Screw-Up Also Doesn’t Know What Aleppo Is

When reporting on the embarrassing admission from Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson that he didn’t know what Aleppo is, The New York Times inadvertently revealed that they didn’t really know what Aleppo is either.

“’What is Aleppo?’ Mr. Johnson said when asked on MSNBC how, as president, he would address the refugee crisis in the Syrian city that is the de facto capital of the Islamic State,” reported the Times.

The only problem is that Aleppo is decidedly not the capital of the ISIS caliphate. That would be the Syrian city of Raqqa (or arguably Mosul, in Iraq). After criticism, The New York Times edited the piece to read that Aleppo is an ISIS “stronghold.”

But even that isn’t accurate. The city of Aleppo is mostly divided between the Syrian government and rebels, and ISIS has nothing resembling a “stronghold” in the city.

Finally, in it’s most current form, The New York Times simply, but accurately, calls Aleppo a “wartorn Syrian city” and added a correction: “An earlier version of this article incorrectly called the city of Aleppo the de facto capital of the Islamic State and an ISIS stronghold. Raqqa, in northern Syria, is the de facto ISIS capital.”

[Image via screengrab]

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