As promised, the Washington Post has updated its story by Dan Balz published yesterday that claimed both CNN and Fox had sold national advertising to NARAL for its fraudulent commercial insinuating that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts supported violence against women. It ran the correction at the top of the original story on its website:

Correction to This Article

Because of incorrect information from NARAL Pro-Choice America, an Aug. 9 article incorrectly said that a new television ad attacking Judge John G. Roberts Jr. would air on the Fox News Channel.

The Post acknowledges that NARAL lied about its ad placement, and one can see the transparent motivation behind the fib. They wanted to show that their ad passed muster across the political spectrum by saying that FNC had also approved the ad for airtime. Their willingness to use lies to combat the Roberts nomination should prove instructive for not just reporters who rely on their information, but for those who need to measure NARAL's credibility while pondering NARAL's arguments.

Some criticize Dan Balz for not confirming the ad buy with Fox (and CNN) independent of NARAL's assertions. However, that may be just a bit harsh. Their claims of ad buys doesn't strike me as something that would cause immediate skepticism; the ad itself drew so much of it that the details of the purchases probably seemed secondary. Balz did the right thing in the end. He burned the source that lied to him and corrected the record for all to see.

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