CNN's (as of this writing) unmade correction
05:10PM May 08, 2008 in category 
by George W Frink
CNN's failure to correct May 6 primary-eve errors led Karoli to indict them with a personal eulogy.
To my eye she has the story and its conclusion exactly right.
You see, Lake County, Indiana, disrupted the stagecraft of horse-race-reporting journalists by being slow to report returns. As an apparent result, Wolf Blitzer, John King and Hammond, Indiana Mayor Tom McDermont ganged up on Gary, Indiana, Mayor Rudy Clay.
That ugliness began as browbeating and moved on to implications that the digital ballot boxes in Gary had somehow been stuffed -- implications that appear to have been and as of this writing appear to remain vacant speculation.
No pussycat of American journalism, the Chicago Tribune told the story straight and without hints of impropriety, thus fulfilling their journalist responsibility to tell the story they had. In fact, even the Lake County GOP chief said there was "no hanky panky" associated with those primary returns.
I have long relied upon CNN. I hate to think of CNN as as full of sound and fury, signifying whatever makes convenient stagecraft, but bashing public officials with speculative allegations which happen to give drama to the sometimes tired business of reporting election returns isn't worthwhile journalism. If I were involved in that primary-eve contretemps, one way or another, I'd issue a correction and apology. Such corrections are both painful to make and among the fundamental obligations of facts-first American journalism.
