In my previous life as a newspaper editor, I had to make occasional quick and close calls about sources and evidence. I made some bad calls, from time to time. You don’t always have the sort of story you think you have. I think Breitbart made a bad call, but I do not think he maliciously misrepresented the story.

By way of comparison: NBC did not blow up a pick-up truck by accident for their infamous GM hit piece; they rigged the thing in advance. Dan Rather, to this day, has not owned up to basing a story on forged documents. So far as I can tell, Andrew Breitbart is still operating at a higher editorial standard than the producers of Dateline or the CBS Evening News 60 Minutes II did on those occasions. I do not see a lot of opportunity for self-congratulation in this episode for the mainstream media. Breitbart’s 37-word correction is 37 words more than Dan Rather has offered in honest assessment of his story’s shortcomings. May the mainstream media aspire to live up to Breitbart’s standards.

UPDATE: Corrected.