Late Wednesday, Republican press flacks blasted out a CNBC story whose headline claimed the Energy Department had altered Solyndra-related documents — to shield the administration from further political embarrassment.
Here’s a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner retweeting another Boehner spokesman, who claimed the Obama administration has been caught red handed. So busted!
Except nothing close to this ever happened, and CNBC has now corrected its headline.
The story itself was clear that the “documents” in question were actually press releases that had nothing to do with Solyndra itself, but rather with the loan guarantee program that Solyndra and many, many other companies participated in.
And now for the punchline: the story’s headline has been changed to “Energy Department Altered Loan-Related Releases” and it’s been appended with a correction: “A previous headline on this article incorrectly characterized the press releases as being related to Solyndra.”
Poor form for the DOE to alter online press releases, but an even poorer attempt to keep Solyndra in the headlines.