Hotline #257-A - August 27, 2002

Amtrak ran 17 Acela Express departures through August 27, but has plans to run 23 departures on August 28 and 29, as more trains sets are repaired. That means five Boston-New York round trips (up from four), seven New York-Washington trips (up from five) and six Washington-New York trips (up from four). See Amtrak's site for latest information.

Clarification -- We reported on August 23 about an Associated Press story from the same date about the NTSB's August 22 statement. We said that the story "managed to mangle what the NTSB actually said -- 'Report: Amtrak Train Was Speeding -- An Amtrak train was going more than twice as fast as it should have been when it derailed last month because a speed restriction had been prematurely lifted ...' Only later in the story does it become apparent that the Amtrak train was going as fast as CSX said it could."

Since then, we have learned that AP did not write that headline at all. Rather, the headline was written by editors at the Yahoo! web site, which sends AP wire stories to people who sign up for the service. Also, the original version of the AP story, written for release within Maryland, had a clearer leading sentence. A later national version -- the version picked up by Yahoo! -- had a somewhat vaguer leading sentence. Both the Maryland and national versions had clearer headlines than the one Yahoo! chose to use -- respectively, "Track work unfinished at Amtrak wreck site" and "Report: Speed limit had been lifted on section of track where Amtrak train derailed." Both accurately reflect the message in the NTSB report.