I generally don’t like harping on other outlets’ errors or the always mortifying process of issuing a correction. It’s a mix of ‘there but for the grace of God’ and, in this case, look at the source. But I think here we may have perhaps the best ‘correction’ in the long storied history of ‘corrections’, especially ones stemming from errors no remotely careful journalist ever would have made in the first place.
As noted a bit earlier, on Saturday Breitbart published an exclusive pointing out that President Obama’s Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch was part of the team that defended President Clinton during the Whitewater investigation – not a bad little scooplet. Only it wasn’t the same Loretta Lynch, which kind of takes the punch out of the story.
Breitbart then issued a ‘correction’. But like I said, it’s a correction for the ages.
As you can see, the headline and the entire article is intact, replete with various references to Lynch’s time in the early 90s defending the Clintons. There’s a little “[Corrected]” tacked on to the headline, even though the headline stays the same. And that’s it.
Until you get all the way down to the bottom of the piece.
The best I can say in defense of this comical ‘correction’ is that it would be challenging to amend the piece in light of the categorical collapse of the article’s central assertion. I mean, how do you correct it? I guess you just don’t? Which is pretty much what they did here.
