Top of the evening to all...
Back in January, numerous news organizations reported that then-President Trump had put substantial pressure on the Secretary of State in Georgia to find illegal votes. Someone in the know leaked the contents of a phone call between the two people.
Yesterday, the Ides of March, the Washington Post published a long correction, stating therein that Mr. Trump had been misquoted. On the one hand, there is a difference between a misquote and a fabrication. On the other hand, at least they published a correction.
The late Senator from the State of New York and former US Ambassador to the United States Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said that we are all entitled to our own opinions. We are not entitled to our own facts. With great respect to Mr. Moynihan, I would add that inventing facts does not actually create facts.
When I wrote about this back in October, I wrote that "democracies require tenacious, nosy, and noisy reporters as a check on absolute power." The Washington Post deserves partial credit here. They got one out of three. They were certainly noisy. However, being overly noisy ultimately cannot hide the failure to be overly nosy. Being overly noisy cannot turn pure laziness into tenacity.
One out of three is bad, and quite disappointing from the paper that gave Woodward and Bernstein free rein to pursue a two-year investigation into the Watergate break-in. Katharine Graham would not be pleased.
Have a good evening.
R/SCG
