Maggie Gallagher gave me permission to post this e-mail. She sent it in reference to this column in the Washington Post (reg. req.):
“Did you see Fred Hiatt’s column this morning? Maggie
Statement from Maggie Gallagher, January 29, 2005
Yesterday I sent a letter to the Washington Post, asking the paper retract the specific claim the Bush administration paid me ‘to help promote the president’s proposal.’ For, as I wrote, ‘whether Howard Kurtz and the Washington Post acknowledge it or not, it is this specific charge and not the question of disclosure that is feeding the media coverage.’
This morning, the editorial leadership of the Washington Post has done an honorable thing by retracting this charge: ‘[Gallagher] was not paid to covertly espouse administration views in her columns.’
I hope that other media outlets that, relying on the reputation of the Washington Post, repeated that false charge as fact will show the same integrity and issue their own retractions or corrections. I specifically ask the New York Times to retract the charges made in its January 27 editorial ‘The Best Coverage Money Can Buy.’”
