Washington Post fact-checker accidentally exposes his own newspaper's Bosnia lie

[cerebellum]

Good job by the Washington Post fact-checker in analyzing Hillary Clinton's lie about being in the middle of fierce fightting in Bosnia. But I noticed something typical: While the fact-checker found that his own newspaper, presented a false account of what happened in Bosnia, he didn't bother to find out why, and who did it, and didn't seem to care:

Just because something has appeared in a newspaper does not mean that it is the definitive version of history. (Trust me on this one!) The Clinton camp has circulated a March 26, 1996 quote from a Post article describing Clinton's Bosnia trip as "the first time since Roosevelt that a first lady has voyaged to a potential combat zone." The article went on to say that "other first ladies have visited troops abroad but never in front-line positions," citing the examples of Barbara Bush and Pat Nixon.

How these factoids got into The Post story is unclear, but they offer a misleading picture of the relative risks being run by the three first ladies.


The Daily Howler has the answer:

“How these factoids got into the Post story is unclear?” We’ll tell you how they got into the Post; they got into the Post because John Pomfret—now the editor of Outlook—put them there, presumably thinking them accurate. Dobbs, of course, is a solid team player; he drops Pomfret’s name from this piece as he bats Clinton around again—this time over something so pointless and obscure that it simply doesn’t merit discussion.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh032708.html