Washington Post Corrects Milbank Slur

We have teed off occasionally on the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, an absurdly biased reporter who uses his platform at the Post to shill shamelessly for the Democrats. In that capacity, Milbank performed a feat of Dowdification that might leave Maureen herself breathless. In his Sept. 15 article on Dick Cheney’s appearance on Meet the Press, he edited Cheney’s comments to 1) make Cheney sound heartless, and 2) precisely reverse the meaning of what Cheney actually said. Here is what Milbank wrote:
“Cheney was less forthcoming when asked about Saudi Arabia’s ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. ‘I don’t want to speculate,’ he said, adding that Sept. 11 is ‘over with now, it’s done, it’s history and we can put it behind us.'” What Cheney really said is available here. Milbank’s trick was no accident; it isn’t possible to read what Cheney said and not understand that Cheney’s point was to disagree with the idea that Sept. 11 is “over with now.”
The New York Times has disgraced itself by failing to correct Ms. Dowd’s well-documented falsehoods, even though other newspapers who reprinted the same columns have issued corrections. In this case, at least, the Post has done the right thing by retracting Milbank’s false coverage of Cheney’s interview. The web page with Milbank’s September 15 story now includes this correction:
“A Sept. 15 article on Vice President Cheney’s appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ mischaracterized the vice president’s response to a question about releasing information on Saudi Arabia’s ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. The article quoted Cheney as saying, ‘I don’t want to speculate’ about the ties, and said that the vice president went on to say that Sept. 11 is ‘over with now, it’s done, it’s history and we can put it behind us.’ The article implied that Cheney agreed with this point of view. In fact, in his full remarks, the vice president took the opposite view and argued that it is important, in discussing alleged Saudi connections to the hijackers, not to release information that would jeopardize the United States’ ability to fight terrorism.”
Score one for the Post. But how long are they going to tolerate Milbank on their staff? Even the Times got rid of Jayson Blair.

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