On April 9, 2013, at 9:37 a.m., I ran a post .@TheFix and @FixSean run dubious Thatcher/Palin story, fail to correct about the failure of The Fix blog at The Washington Post, run by Chris Cillizza, to correct a commonly told story about Margaret Thatcher supposedly refusing to meet Sarah Palin because Palin “is nuts.”
We had noted long ago and frequently that the story was denied by those close to Thatcher, and we call this to the attention of The Fix and it writer, Sean Sullivan to no avail. We even pointed out that Politico, hardly a friend of Palin, noted that the story was disputed. I included numerous tweets to The Fix the prior day calling the problem to their attention.
Cillizza recently ran a post What the Boston bombings taught me about journalism, so I wondered whether they ever fixed the Thatcher-Palin story at The Fix.
And sure enough, they did. The italicized paragraph was added:
5 moments that show why Margaret Thatcher mattered in American politics …
5) Spurning Sarah Palin: In 2011, the Guardian newspaper reported that Thatcher would not be meeting with Sarah Palin during Palin’s trip to London. “Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts,” the paper quoted one Thatcher ally as saying. The reported rejection sparked an outcry among conservatives in the United States, lending a great deal of attention to the non-meeting.
It also sparked dispute over whether Thatcher’s inner circle was in fact rejecting Palin. Nile Gardner, a former aide to Thatcher who is a foreign affairs analyst and political commentator at the Daily Telegaph wrote at the time: “I have spoken to Lady Thatcher’s Private Office regarding the story, and they confirm that the attack on Sarah Palin definitely did not come from her office, and in no way reflects her views. As a former aide to Margaret Thatcher myself, I can attest that this kind of thinking is entirely alien to her, and that such remarks would never be made by her office.”
I still think it was a cheap shot to include that supposed incident as one of Thatcher’s 5 most important influences on U.S. politics.
But at least the story is in better context. So good on them for the correction.
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Comments
Ah, yes but the Guardian and others achieved their goal I suppose: Two years of ‘the record’ indicating the gossipy falsehood without any balance. Corrected? Hard to say that is a correction when the original fifth point remains as written as if the original ‘reporting’ has merit.
Nasty.
Excellent Work Professor! Well Done!
Dogged determination to hold vicious white liberals accountable for their malicious lies is not easily done but well worth the results.
You have humbled them.
But there’s the rub…the “commonly told story” is the only story remembered. Evil knows this fact: a lie is around the World before the truth can get its boots on. More importantly, the lie is all the majority will ever know and the truth is nevermore. How many times a day do you hear someone say something you know to be false? If you say anything about that being proven to be false that someone either ignores you or starts threatening you. This is especially prevalent when Pols lips are moving.
bet they waited until the stats (views) for the story started to drop before changing though.