The Washington Post issued a correction on a story that Dan Balz wrote about the NARAL ad that falsely accuses John Roberts of “excusing” violent clinic bombers:

Correction to This Article: Because of incorrect information from NARAL Pro-Choice America, an Aug. 9 article incorrectly said that a new television ad attacking Judge John G. Roberts Jr. would air on the Fox News Channel.

In discussing this story yesterday on the Hugh Hewitt radio show with Peter Robinson and Carol Liebau, who are currently guest hosting, I mentioned something I should have mentioned on the blog yesterday: Balz is a solid reporter and his story on the NARAL ad was far more balanced than the Sheryl Gay Stolberg article in the NY Times yesterday (see TimesWatch for details). When I mentioned this, Peter Robinson agreed and argued that Balz probably failed to check out NARAL’s claim about Fox News because “why would NARAL lie about something that could be so easily verified?” Now that such an esteemed member of the DC press corps as Balz has been embarrassed by NARAL’s lies, maybe other reporters will be more skeptical of anything its spokespeople say.

Or maybe not. In today’s NY Times, Linda Greenhouse repeats the same error that the Post just corrected:

The focus of the 30-second spot, which Naral Pro-Choice America is spending $500,000 to place on the Fox and CNN cable networks, as well as on broadcast stations in Maine and Rhode Island over the next two weeks…

After all the corrections have run, will reporters ever take anything NARAL says at face value again? More importantly, should they ever have in the first place? (Thanks to Media Blog reader IQV for spotting the Times error.)