Thwacking the media for false reporting

In response to this article...
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0426-09.htm

I sent this email:

To: 76702.765@COMPUSERVE.COM
CC: editor@commondreams.org, webmaster@commondreams.org
Subject: Factual errors in Thom Hartmann article "White House Re-Writes Presidential
Histories"

To whom it may concern...

You may wish to retract the Thom Hartmann article "White House Re-Writes Presidential Histories". The premise of the article is that the Bush White House has rewritten the biographies of past presidents with a Republican bias. This appears to be a false assumption on the part of Mr. Hartmann, or possibly a total fabrication, as in fact the biographies are unchanged. Mr. Hartmann, shame on you!

Proof...
Using the WayBack Machine at archive.org, I looked up the presidential biographies Mr. Hartmann refers to. The biographies are in fact unchanged since 1996, during the Clinton presidency.

Jefferson:
Current: http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/tj3.html
1996: http://web.archive.org/web/19961106194417/http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/glimpse/presidents/html/tj3.html
2000: http://web.archive.org/web/20000815212356/http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/glimpse/presidents/html/tj3.html

Madison:
Current: http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jm4.html
1996: http://web.archive.org/web/19990417083654/www.whitehouse.gov/WH/glimpse/presidents/html/jm4.html
2000: http://web.archive.org/web/20000301014518/www1.whitehouse.gov/WH/glimpse/presidents/html/jm4.html

Publishing articles with total fabrications such as this seriously harms the credibility of Mr. Hartmann as well as the Common Dreams website. The correct thing to do would be to remove the article and publish a retraction.

Sincerely,

Vaughn Teegarden