For example, the "Leko is Dead" mentioned above. Five years ago, I
merely stated that Leko was reported dead, which was true, he was
reported dead, and only nine hours later when he was found at home
alive I corrected the error and apologized.


just to do a small fact check here I have the original post that you
made about it:

Sam Sloan View profile
More options Dec 1 2002, 10:46 pm

Newsgroups: soc.culture.magyar, rec.games.chess.politics,
rec.games.chess.misc
From: (Sam Sloan)
Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 03:48:21 GMT
Local: Sun, Dec 1 2002 10:48 pm
Subject: Peter Leko killed in car accident
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"Peter Leko was killed in a car accident today in Budapest.

It has been reported that Leko died in a car crash while analyzing a
game he had played against Shirov on a pocket set. Shirov is in Spain
now and was not in the accident.


Leko, 23, recently won a qualification tournament and was scheduled
to
play a match for the World Chess Championship. He was once the
world's
youngest grandmaster and has consistently been rated in the top ten
players in the world."


Sam Sloan

Your first line is saying he died. Not he may have died, or Susan
Polgar has reported he has died.

Only after you state he is dead do you say it is reported that he
died. Then you don't say who reported it, which basically means you
heard it from someone and you don't care to tell us who it was, only
later blaming it on Susan Polgar. What you really wanted I suspect
was to get credit for reporting it if was true and to shed blame if as
it turned out it was untrue.

If you were a journalist you would be fired for this but since you are
not it all just provided us with many years of good natured fun.

Use of the term, "it is reported" or "I have heard" are just playing
the Mission Impossible card in case what you report is erroneous you
can later deny that you stated it as fact, which as it turns out is
exactly what you dead.

That was exactly my point. You quite frequently report things as if
they were facts, and when you are found to be in error or mistaken
instead of apologizing for having been incorrect you play the blame
game and merely say that it was told or reported by someone else to
you. A person who repeats erroneous information, even if it was given
to them by someone else is still wrong for repeating erroneous
information without checking their facts.

And one more thing, you never really apologized. You blamed the
person that told you he was dead and said you weren't at fault for
posting his death erroneously. All you really had to say was "I am
sorry. I made a mistake" But I never heard "sorry" or "mistake" in
any of your posts. Maybe I missed it, can you find it? If so I will
apologize and admit I made a mistake for saying you never said you
were sorry and made a mistake.