The Washington Post printed their correction first, then Newsweek printed theirs. Both had incorrectly stated that as of Saturday, Louisiana Gov. Blanco still hadn’t gotten around to declaring a state of emergency, and this was the reason why federal response was so slow.
In fact, Blanco issued a state of emergency on Friday, August 26th, (BEFORE THE STORM HIT) which was reported on major news sources, and even was posted on the Governor’s website [link is a PDF file].
The Post and Newsweek both cited as their source for the incorrect information as an unidentified “senior Bush official” but neither in their corrections identified the source who misled them.
Which makes me wonder about linking to or quoting any of their coverage, if they’re going to let people lie to them and not burn bad sources, or even double check source information to determine it’s bad before printing it, then the rest of their coverage is suspect, too.
That’s one key fact of the Plame scandal that no one has hammered home yet; none of the reporters taking information from anonymous sources are bothering to check on or back up that information at all — which is shameful, and terrible, terrible journalism. That’s what the entire movie of “All the President’s Men” was about — two reporters trying to corroborate information given to them by an anonymous source, schlepping from door to door trying to find anyone who could back-up what they were given by Deep Throat before they printed it.
Now The Washington Post and Newsweek print any old crap the White House tells them, without even doing a simple two-minute google search to find out if it’s true or not. That’s not journalism. That’s STENOGRAPHY.