Washington Post Corrects Story Claiming Dems "Backed Off" On Iraq
May 6, 2007 -- 8:02 AM EST // // Post a Comment
Updated below with Weisman's objections to my interpretation of the correction.
The Washington Post has now added a correction to its widely-discussed story saying Congressional Dems had "backed off" by telling the White House that they would drop withdrawal timetables from their Iraq war-funding bill:
Correction to This ArticleA May 3 Page One article about negotiations between President Bush and congressional Democrats over a war spending bill said the Democrats offered the first major 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.
In other words, the premise and headline of WaPo's front-page story were essentially false. While it does seem likely that the withdrawal timetables will be gone from whatever final compromise emerges, this concession to the White House simply never happened.
Nonetheless, the story got tons of play. As this blogger rightly notes, WaPo's story had a major impact on the debate. It caused a great deal of consternation on the left, forcing Nancy Pelosi to go before the Dem caucus to tell her charges that the story was false. It was also picked up by some reporters at the big news orgs, such as Time.com's Karen Tumulty. And it caused a fair amount of whooping and high-fives on the right. "Dems retreat on surrender initiative!" shrieked hapless winger Jules Crittendon. Except, of course, that they didn't.
Update: As a commenter below points out, it looks as if David Broder didn't read his paper's correction. In a column that otherwise makes some fair points, Broder writes today:
The Democratic leadership already has signaled its readiness to drop the timetable, and further concessions are likely as negotiations continue with the White House.
Saying Dems have "signaled" a willingness to drop the timetable isn't as definitive as the original story was, and again, it looks as if the timetables may be dropped in the end. But this concession simply hasn't been made yet in negotiations with the White House. Why the eagerness to say that it's been offered when it hasn't?
Update II: In fairness to Weisman, I'm reprinting his entire comment below objecting to my interpretation of this. He writes:
The posting was supposed to be a clarification, not a correction, and your misinterpretation ratifies the concerns of the editors who didn't want to run it in the first place. The article stated that the Democrats had made the first real concession, agreeing to drop a fixed timeline to withdraw troops from the war-funding bill. That was completely accurate, and we stand by it. House Democrats are now considering a short-term funding bill with benchmarks but no timeline. The Senate may not even go that far.Due to the phrasing of the story's lead, Nancy Pelosi believed it sounded like that concession was offered face to face as she and Bush met at the White House. If it did sound like that, it was completely unintentional. Indeed, the editors of the paper believed the lead made no such inference at all. The concessions were made to me, as a reporter, talking to senior leadership aides and members of leadership. But because the speaker was so insistent that we clarify that the offer was not made to the president himself, I saw no harm in running the clarification as a clarification. We were not retracting or correcting anything.
I am wondering now if once again, no good deed goes unpunished. We should have run no clarification at all, and taken the heat from the speaker. And one note, Greg Sargent, you know how to reach me. Why don't you pick up your phone before you post conjecture. I'd be happy to help.
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