When media goes global, so do the goofs.

At this moment you can view the bizarre headline "Iran Ready to Israel Attack on Nuclear Facilities" on the websites of:

Associated Press (Google)
Associated Press (Yahoo News)
CBS News
Washington Post
ABC News
Statesman
Newsvine

Dozens of news sites and blogs throughout the US and around the world, including India, Turkey, Indonesia and Taiwan, have replicated the headline error. 

The story, by  AP business writer Yuri Kageyama, was datelined Tokyo on July 6, and quoted comments by  Alaeddin Broujerdi, the head of Iran's parliamentary committee who is visiting Japan, responding to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's thrice repeated assertion on Sunday that the U.S. could not prevent Israel from attacking Iran if Israel decided it was in its national interest to do so.  Israeli and global media have been framing and headlining Biden's remarks as a long awaited "green light" to Israel to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. 

"Both the U.S. and Israel are aware of the consequence of an erroneous decision," Broujerdi told reporters at the Iranian Embassy in Tokyo.

"I believe our response will be real and decisive," Broujerdi said. He declined to elaborate.

It is almost certain that the story's headline was either supposed to be "Israel Ready to Attack Iran Nuclear Facilities" or "Iran Ready for Israeli Attack on Nuclear Facilities." It  ended up a muddle of the two.  It was posted by most news sites just after midnight on July 6.

On Sunday, a column by Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander dealt with the devastating effects of cutbacks in copy editors, proofreaders and fact checkers:

Little mistakes take a huge toll on credibility. A groundbreaking newspaper industry study on credibility a decade ago warned that "each misspelled word, bad apostrophe, garbled grammatical construction, weird cutline and mislabeled map erodes public confidence in a newspaper's ability to get anything right."

Which brings up the credibility of the "green light" story...(next time).

Update: 9:20 am. Andy Alexander, the  Washington Post's ombudsman, has just e-mailed me:  "Thanks. I'll add it to my growing file.  Best wishes."  So the error may soon disappear from the WaPo site (which was the first place I spotted it).