Illiteracy at the Washington Post

Here's an odd update to a post I made last week about the Democrats caving on Iraq. It turns out that things aren't always as they seem. The Washington Post headlined a story about the Democrats backing down on timetables for Iraq. I was complaining about the Dems falling back on unfortunately comfortable strategies of rolling over to give the Prez whatever he wanted, but I didn't quote the lead. Here it is now.

President Bush and congressional leaders began negotiating a second war funding bill yesterday, with Democrats offering the first major concession: an agreement to drop their demand for a timeline to bring troops home from Iraq.

It sounds pretty straightforward, but as I noted in an update to the post, it wasn't long before the offices of the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader were telling Greg Sargent (and probably anybody else who would listen) that the story wasn't true. But Jonathan Weisman, cowriter of the piece, stood by the story, even though the details he now offered didn't quite lead to the conclusion in the headline.

If you clicked on the link above, though, you'll have noticed that now the Post has added what they're referring to as a correction to the piece. Here's what they say:

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 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.

(This is completely a side issue, but the Post may want to beef up its budget for proofreading or cut it out altogether. I'm copying and pasting, so the typos and mangled syntax above are just as they appear on the Website as of this writing.)

So effectively, the Post is admitting that their headline and lead were wrong and that the Democrats had not made any concessions. It's unfortunate that the false information was given such prominent placement, but I guess that happens in journalism sometimes.

Or does it? Despite the correction, Weisman responded to Greg Sargent, who also noted the correction, with one of the oddest defenses I've seen from a working writer (particularly one with a high-profile gig like The Washington Post). Sargent provides the entire response, but I'm just going to quote it selectively.

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.

If the editors were concerned that their statement might be misinterpreted as a correction, they should've been more careful than to label it as a "correction." That's a rookie mistake that seasoned editors should be able to avoid.

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.

I wonder where Pelosi could've come up with such an idea, particularly when the editors not only didn't mean to convey it but don't think they did at all. Maybe we need to look at the opening sentence of the story again.

President Bush and congressional leaders began negotiating a second war funding bill yesterday, with Democrats offering the first major concession: an agreement to drop their demand for a timeline to bring troops home from Iraq.

Oh, I see why she might've thought that. It's because that's what it says. The "with" clause describing the concession modifies the verb, "began negotiating." According to that sentence, the concession was a feature of the negotiations. There's no other way to understand that sentence. The fact that Weisman argues that the sentence doesn't mean precisely what it says indicates that he's grasping at straws. If, as he claims, he's representing the views of his editors, then they all should be fired for incompetence. If he didn't mean for the story to say what it clearly says, he should at least make sure he has a copy editor who knows a little bit about how words work to back him up. From the looks of things, Weisman is being completely hung out to dry by editors who must be sabotaging his prose. But wait, he's not finished yet.

The concessions were made to me, as a reporter, talking to senior leadership aides and members of leadership.

I completely missed the part where Weisman was negotiating with the Democrats. Aside from the point that the structure of the sentence ties the concession directly with the negotiations, using the term concession in the presence of the word negotiation is going to set up an implicit connection.

So which interpretation is more charitable, that Weisman is disingenuous in claiming that he didn't mean what he wrote or that he's an idiot who doesn't know the meaning of what he wrote?