The Memory Hole At The Post

Funny business concerning Howard Kurtz's media column, which I'm looking into.

Yesterday, I blogged about a line  by Kurtz:

Joe Wilson Was Right About What, Howard Kurtz?

In his online Media Notes column, Howard Kurtz repeats something he's said one or two times recently:

...So the response is that 1) the Dems are playing politics (and Rove wasn't, in dragging in Mrs. Joe Wilson?). And 2) Rove was just performing a public service by steering a reporter away from a false story (actually, Wilson was right about the bogus Niger uranium tale, and the White House was wrong).

Actually, the Senate Intelligence Committee's 8-gazillion page report  issued a year ago this month concluded that Wilson lied about the information he found, what the Bush Administration did with it and who sent him to Africa in the first place....

And then quoted this Susan Schmidt story from last year spelling it out. This morning, Jim Lindgren at the Volokh Conspiracy linked to Calblog, who noticed the same problem this morning (CORRECTION--blogged on it last night)--and more. One version of the Kurtz column has added the line: although his credibility did take a hit from a critical Senate intelligence committee report.

That line was not in yesterday's online column.

Not only that, but my original link to yesterday's Media Notes calls up today's file, not yesterday's. Meanwhile, Calblog finds the original column, sans back-filled semi-correction, in the print version of the column.

Not cool--and not just because Kurtz, or somebody, added this line long after the original file. The key problem is that Kurtz's original file calls for a correction: Wilson's credibility didn't just "take a hit;" the Senate intelligence committee concluded that Wilson lied--lied about the evidence, for starters.

Email off to ombudsman Michael Getler & Howard Kurtz.