MediaWatch: January 1992
Table of Contents:
Post Corrects Itself
QUAYLE QUIBBLES
Three years after maligning Vice President Dan Quayle with undocumented falsehoods about his qualifications for office, The Washington Post has boldly gone where no media outlet has gone before: it's correcting the record.
In the third installment of a seven-part January series by Post heavyweights David Broder and Bob Woodward, the duo conceded: "Some serious charges made against Quayle -- including allegations of academic failure or dishonesty and manipulation of National Guard rules -- as well as descriptions of vast wealth appear to be false."
But the Post wasn't bold enough to admit that some of those false charges were its own. On January 12, The Washington Times took pleasure in pillorying its rival.
The Times found embarrassing Post falsehoods, such an August 17, 1988 news story by Broder and Helen Dewar: "Quayle is vastly wealthier than Bush, and stands to inherit a large share of a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars." Now, Broder has reported: "Contrary to published assertions and speculation, Quayle does not stand to inherit part of the estate of his grandfather." But he didn't tell readers it was his error.
Meanwhile, other reporters responded to the Quayle series not by reporting the Post's corrections, but by joking about the Post going soft. The networks, which worked so hard to damage Quayle in 1988, have been mostly silent. ABC, which earned a Janet Cooke Award for its false reporting about Quayle's National Guard record, is especially guilty of failing to make retractions, even though they did interview Woodward on Good Morning America on January 13.
