Last week, the New York Times decided to mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo space program by calling attention to NASA’s “gender bias” problem:

The Apollo program was designed by men, for men. If we do not acknowledge the gender bias of the early space program, it becomes difficult to move past it. https://t.co/Mt7rVLgAaf — The New York Times (@nytimes) July 17, 2019

Apparently the New York Times wanted to call attention to gender bias in space exploration so badly that they straight-up invented some:

Well, THIS seems… significant, @nytimes: "An essay about gender bias in American space exploration misstated the genders of people involved in testing of the SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. The testing included both men and women, not only men."https://t.co/kCoQD2yuvt pic.twitter.com/F6z0IREAev — Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) July 23, 2019

“Misstated the genders.” Seems like a fancy way of saying “We didn’t feel like letting inconvenient facts get in the way of our convenient narrative.”

If you're going to write about 'gender bias in American space exploration,' it would be a good idea to get the genders right…https://t.co/fUpnmtmHhS — Byron York (@ByronYork) July 23, 2019

And speaking of “you had one job” things, take a look at this:

? – "It showed a view of Earth, not the moon." "A picture caption with an article on Saturday… misidentified the object in the image taken from the Apollo 11 spacecraft. It showed a view of Earth, not the moon."https://t.co/kCoQD2yuvt pic.twitter.com/Mtqo5j187u — Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) July 23, 2019

So close, NYT! You guys almost had it!

Clarification from @NYTimes… this is NOT the moon: pic.twitter.com/MyiHNKn40k — Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) July 23, 2019

Maybe the NYT should just sit out this whole “space” thing for a while.