Oops The Chronicle Did It Again

In it's April 10th issue, the Chronicle admitted (in a correction titled "Oops") that it had mistakenly reported, based on information from the ASPCA and Austin's pound, that the percentage of animals killed at Austin's pound has declined each year since the current shelter director was hired in November 2000.  As FixAustin.org pointed out at the time (and here), that claim is not remotely true. 

So the Chronicle editor issued this statement in its latest edition:

In "How Many Cats Did Austin Save Last Year?" News, April 3, in briefly summarizing long-term trends, we mischaracterized the euthanasia rate over the last nine years, and we regret the error. Although the total numbers of animals killed at the Town Lake Animal Center slowly declined over the previous decade, the marked improvement in the euthanasia rate (that is, the percentage of received animals killed) has occurred over the past year in connection with the new Mission: Orange partnership. The larger trend is that, for most of the Nineties, Austin was killing two-thirds of the animals received at the center but is now killing less than a third.

One would think the Chronicle would have bothered to fact-check its factual correction to its incorrect factual claim, but on the subject of Austin's pound, it has become clear that the Chronicle does not bother to verify that its factual claims are true. The editor's new claim--- that "the total numbers of animals killed at the Town Lake Animal Center slowly declined over the previous decade"---is also wrong.

Starting with fiscal-year 2000-01, the total number of animals killed each year at the shelter is (in date order):  11,567; 10,722; 12,466; 12,887; 14,304; 12,343; 14,055; 10916. While we feel safe speaking for most Austinites in celebrating the most recent decline in shelter killing, we wish the Chronicle would limit its reporting to "facts" that are actually true.