It seems as if our Dishonor Roll is finally getting some attention:

I learned during a weekly meeting that one of our more able and principled senior managers had become quite the buzz on the partisan blogosphere after sending a respectful e-mail to a Web site reader from Iowa who had complained about our report on [Joseph] Wilson’s appearance at Town Hall.
Unaware he was going to be featured and ridiculed on the writer’s blog and in National Review Online, Assistant Managing Editor Mark Matassa sent a polite, two-sentence response to the complaining reader:
“Thanks again for your message last week,” Matassa wrote, keeping a promise he had made in an earlier e-mail. “I reread the story and the background information, and while I appreciate your semantic point, I don’t believe a correction is warranted.”
Some editors and news directors say most of their complaints come from partisans more interested in having their viewpoints validated than in accuracy or fairness.
I’m not sure the occurrence is that high, or that I see any value in the first place in quantifying. Experience teaches editors that all complaints deserve to be heard. Being dismissive toward those delivered in anger, those put forth for reasons that appear to be self-serving or those obviously fueled by the complainer’s own political prejudices comes at serious peril.
The result, besides unhealthy insularity, is that news organizations miss nuances that can indeed spell bias and miss ambiguities and errors that really ought to be corrected, regardless of who brings them to your attention.
I don’t think that’s the case in the determination by Matassa and other editors that our report on Wilson’s appearance here does not need correcting. Conservative bloggers continue to assert that in his fact-finding trip to Niger in February 2002, Wilson found evidence to support the contention that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium there. But Wilson, the person best positioned to say what he found and what he reported, is adamant.
“That’s absolutely not true,” he told me in a telephone conversation.
Wilson said his trip to Niger turned up nothing to substantiate British intelligence reports that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there, just as we reported. Nonetheless, conservative bloggers say he is lying and that our report was wrong, presumably because we didn’t say so.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s new motto: We’ll take your word for it.

As one reader wrote:

There you have it. Wilson was the best positioned to know what he said and he was adamant that it was not true. Case closed. Any other evidence or facts to the contrary. Because, you know, Wilson wouldn