NY Times corrects front-page photo caption

NEW YORK — The New York Times ran a lengthy correction Wednesday after the newspaper learned that a recent front-page photo of a crying Zimbabwean baby with casts on his feet misrepresented the boy's injuries.

The caption on the June 26 photo said that the boy sustained his injuries from state-sponsored violence in Zimbabwe. But subsequent reporting determined the boy actually had club feet and that his mother exaggerated the injuries.

The boy's mother initially told the newspaper that her son's injuries were caused after youths backing Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe threw her son onto a concrete floor. But she later acknowledged she misrepresented his injuries because she could not afford surgery for his condition, the newspaper said in an editors' note.

In the article published on June 26, she told the newspaper that soldiers for the African nation's ruling party came looking for her after her husband, an opposition organizer, went into hiding.

The newspaper took the boy to a medical clinic in Harare after the picture and accompanying article were published, the editors' note said. Doctors said Monday that X-rays showed no broken bones and discovered the boy had club feet — a congenital birth defect that can turn feet inward.

The boy's mother, in subsequent interviews, told the newspaper that youths did throw her son to the floor, but that she had exaggerated the severity of his injuries. She later said the boy had been wearing the casts at the time of the attack as part of treatment he received elsewhere for club feet.

The mother and son were not named in the editors' note or the original article. Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty said the newspaper withheld their names out of concern they could become targets of reprisals.

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