A few questions:

1) Do you also support printing op-ed pieces with known false assertions? How about editorials? Or is your support for the publication of false assertions limited to those contained in letters?

2) If the assertion is not corrected immediately below, does that change your mind?

3) How to decide which particular false assertions to print? Newspaper space is scarce, and there are all sorts of loony beliefs out there. Should we print that Elvis is alive? That [insert Presidential candidate here] has deliberately committed premeditated murder? I guarantee that there are people who hold these beliefs.

4) What about when assertions are not obviously false to every rational person (”the world is flat”) but false only to people who are paying attention (”Cheney invited Scalia on the hunting trip”) (”Bush has proposed the complete elimination of taxes on the wealthiest 1%”)? The more plausible the statement, the greater the chance to mislead.

I am all in favor of open and robust debate. But the editors of the letters page choose what to print. They shouldn’t choose arguments based on provably false factual assertions. IMSomewhatHO.

Better the correction come from a reader. Let’s see if and how they correct this one.

You may be right about this. So, how about showing the letters they plan to print to the reporters or editors who worked on the relevant story? Are you telling me a major newspaper has no policy in place to make sure they’re not printing factually false statements?

By the way, these editors — the ones who don’t necessarily know much about the stories they cover — these are the same people who write editorials based on those stories, right? That’s what I thought.

It explains *so* much.

Am I channeling Rumsfeld, here?

2. Yes, but even then I’d prefer to see the letters printed rather than not printed. I’d rather see some crap get through every now and then than have cutting edge ideas stifled because the editors “know” it’s not true - even though, in some cases, it is.

3. I’d print the ones that address false assertions that are popular enough to be worth dealing with and debunking. And for the record, Elvis is alive. Both of them, in fact (Grbac and Costello).

4. The problem with that kind of censorship is that it tends to stifle real debate. If your rule were adopted, I guarantee that any letter suggesting that concealed carry or the death penalty deters crime would not get printed, because everyone on the Times’s staff “knows” them not to be true (and, it’s not 100% clear that they are).

In each of these cases, the best remedy is to print a rebuttal. Failing that, there’s nothing to stop you or anyone else from writing in a rebuttal letter of your own.

[bans Xrlq from making any more comments]

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[Just kidding. But you see my point, no?]