Ten in Texas and Tenant not Tenet
An error attributed to governor. Who said it and who spread it.

Bob Garrett, the Twitter blue-badged Dallas Morning News Austin bureau chief wrote that the governor of Texas said, “Peaceful protest is a core tenant of the US Constitution; violence & mayhem are not.”

Garrett is a man of words, but the word is tenet not tenant.

He also introduced the gibberish &d to the English language.

In the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Brian Lopez, Luke Ranker, and Eleanor Dearman repeated the wrong word tenant. Civilly, the three reporters’ email addresses are in their byline.

In the capital city, in an article titled, indeed, “Fact Check: Without evidence, Texas Attorney General Paxton says ‘antifa’ involved in Capitol riot,” Kate Winkle of KXAN-TV, Austin wrote that a spokeswoman for the governor referred the television station to the unfortunate statement.

Such a person, Renae Eze @RenaeEze, “Press Secretary & Senior Communications Advisor for @GovAbbott” retweeted Garrett’s message.

Wnkle’s quote of Abbott made it to another domain, valleycentral.com, the website address of KVEO-TV, Brownsville. Its news director is Amy Sullivan.

An eighth person to spread the the misuse of the word tenant is Emmy award-winning reporter, anchor and podcaster Grace White of television station KHOU (in, of course, Houston). She wrote

Abbott’s office sent us this statement:

“Peaceful protest is a core tenant of the United States Constitution; violence and mayhem are not. The violence and mayhem must stop. America is founded on the rule of law, and the law enforcement officers working to restore order at the United States Capitol must be heeded.”

Persons Nine and Ten responsible for spreading the word tenant are big shots. An item under the byline “CBS Austin and Associated Press” dutifully repeats the T word with the attribution “Gov. Greg Abbott released a statement through spokesperson John Wittman.” #TX #n26257

The news director of CBS Austin is Rob Cartwright (at least, according to a newspaper). #2101C #n1971

A solution is a phrase checker. That’s like a spell checker, but for multiple words. For instance, Hugh Scott is not, never was and never will be Senate Majority Leader (because he is dead). #Error9

Jill Colvin’s Error, 20201123
She used the word tenants instead of the word tenets

Jill Colvin wrote: “Trump has remained largely behind closed doors since he lost his bid for reelection. He has refused to concede, lodging baseless allegations of voter fraud in an attempt to subvert the results and undermine one of the basic tenants of democracy.”

Instead of “tenants,” Colvin should have used the word tenets.

The passage appears on the website of the Tampa Bay Times at https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/11/23/white-house-still-planning-holiday-parties-despite-warnings/ in an article with the date November 23, 2020. The byline is “By Associated Press.” At the end of the item is “–By JILL COLVIN, Associated Press.”

According to the AP, Colvin began with that wire service in 2014. https://www.ap.org/ap-in-the-news/2014/ap-names-colvin-to-politics-post-in-new-jersey

Who is your editor, Ms. Colvin? #n26257 #Error30