Scrubbing Clean For The White House

The New York Sun’s Josh Gerstein reports today that former American Enterprise Editor (now White House domestic policy advisor) Karl Zinsmeister “altered his own quotes and other text in a published newspaper profile of him posted on the Web site of the magazine he has edited for more than a decade, the American Enterprise.”

In response to queries from The New York Sun yesterday, the White House said all of the changes were to correct errors in the August 2004 article, which was written by Justin Park and published in a weekly newspaper, the Syracuse New Times.

“These were corrections that were made due to misattributions or misunderstandings by the reporter that were cleaned up when they were reposted,” a White House spokeswoman, Jeanie Mamo, said.

Mr. Park and his editor, Molly English, rejected that explanation. “If there’s an inaccuracy, he should have called me or he should have called Justin,” Ms. English said. She said it was unethical for Mr. Zinsmeister to post an altered version of the story without permission. “It’s reprehensible, frankly,” Ms. English said. “Once this is published, it’s not his property. From that point in time, he can’t just pick and choose.”

Was Zinsmeister scrubbing his record clean in anticipation of a White House Post?

Maybe such revisions aren’t so uncommon at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, however. From May 21, 2006:

Pool Report #2

…

In case you didn’t catch the change in the corrected version of this
morning’s statement- it was the difference between “peace” and
“freedom.”

What the president actually said was: “The formation of a unity
government in Iraq is a new day for the millions of Iraqis who want to
live in freedom.”

Apparently those who want to live in peace are on their own.

Todd J. Gillman
The Dallas Morning News

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