A serious problem occurred at the Washington Post on May 3. They issued a front-page, lead article called "Democrats Back Down on Iraq Timetable" which revolved around this important piece of news: "Democrats offer[ed] the first major concession" in negotiations about the Iraq war bill, "an agreement to drop their demand for a timeline to bring troops home from Iraq."
The problem is this: there was no such concession and there was no such agreement. This lead paragraph was simply untrue – as untrue, in fact, as any other claim that is not true, like:
- Santa Claus is living in the North Pole, getting ready for Christmas 2007.
- Two plus two equals five.
- Iraq’s aluminum tubes were being used for nuclear fission.
There’s no nuance here, no room for shading. The Democrats, quite simply, did not "offer the first major concession" and did not "agree to drop their demand for a timeline." These things did not happen. But the Washington Post’s Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray reported that they did. They might as well have reported any other false or fictional event.
This is an extraordinarily grave error for a major newspaper to make. It’s not a question of excluding certain facts here, or tilting things in an inaccurate way. Rather, the Washington Post reported as news, or fact, something which was simply false. And this is on a truly important matter, since the political struggle between the Democrats and Bush over this bill is of huge consequence. It will determine, in all likelihood, the course of the Iraq war and the future political fortunes of both parties in 2008. Men and women will die, or live, be brain-damaged or uninjured, based on the realities of how these negotiations play out.
The Washington Post’s claim was picked up by any number of other news outlets. But the correction they issued – not so much. This correction is rather stunning. Surely, the fact that the Post printed a substantially false story deserves another front page story for itself. In fact, doesn’t it deserve TWO front-page stories:
- If it is front-page news that the Democrats did "offer the first major concession" and did "agree to drop their demand for a timeline" then surely it is equally significant that they didn’t concede or drop this demand.
- Isn’t the Washington Post’s own false, and influential, reporting a news story itself – and one which they obviously are fully aware of. How did this happen? What does the reporter have to say? What other papers picked it up? How do sources respond to this mistake? What is the real play of negotiations if this story was essentially a fabrication that didn’t reflect what’s actually going on.
The Post has been scandalously silent on all of these questions. Far from being interviewed (by another reporter), Weisman bylined another article since this false story with the headline "Democrats' Momentum Is Stalling". And, instead of more reporting on either the negotiations or the Post's own false story, the newspaper issued a half-hearted correction that, online, is merely tacked on to the archive of the story. Almost nobody would see this correction.
A May 3 Page One article about negotiations between President Bush and congressional Democrats over a war spending bill said the Democrats offered the first 9major [sic] concession by dropping their demand that the bill it include a deadline to bring troops home from Iraq. While Democrats are no longer pushing a firm date for troop withdrawals, party leaders did not specifically make that concession during a Wednesday meeting with Bush at the White House.
The correction is not only buried -- it's also inaccurate. The key clause claims that Democratic "party leaders did not specifically make that concession." This implies, of course, that party leader made some concessions, just not "specifically" that one. This is also not true from everything we know. So the correction itself is false or misleading, and probably needs to be corrected. In any case, this correction won’t suffice. The Washington Post will need to run a news story both about what happened and the real state of affairs on the Iraq war bill.
Bloggers are now starting to pick up this buried correction and bring it to the light of day. Without this – without the political blogosphere – the correction would go down the memory-hole, and we would still be in a world where, with surprising ease, two plus two can be made to equal five.