Former L.A. Times columnist Robert Scheer has a penchant for getting facts wrong. But you’d never know it from accessing the columns available from his personal web site. Those columns uniformly either repeat his errors without correction, or airbrush them to make it appear that he had it right all along.

Although Scheer’s L.A. Times column was the subject of repeated and numerous corrections over the years, you’ll search in vain for any hint of these corrections in the versions of Scheer’s archived columns available from his personal web site.

For example, the L.A. Times version of Scheer’s September 13 piece, titled Finally fooling none of the people, bears the following appended correction:

FOR THE RECORD:

Michael Brown: A Sept. 13 commentary about FEMA said that former director Michael D. Brown was a “college buddy” of his predecessor, Joe Allbaugh. The two have been friends for more than 25 years but did not know each other in college.

But the version of this piece in the Scheer archives linked from RobertScheer.com, which in turn is linked from Scheer’s new TruthDig site, bears no hint of this correction. Scheer’s archived version simply prints Scheer’s original false statement, completely undisturbed by any correction:

[Michael Brown] had secured this plum job because he was a college buddy of his predecessor, Joe Allbaugh, who managed Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign.

I wondered: was this an isolated incident? Or did Scheer’s complete set of private archives similarly whitewash his errors?

I had a friend do a LEXIS search. I’ll give you one guess as to what it showed.

You’re a genius! Yes, your guess is right: Scheer’s archives contain none of his numerous corrections. Instead, they simply airbrush errors — or, more commonly, simply leave the false assertions standing without correction.

For example, on LEXIS, an April 12 Scheer column bears this correction:

CORRECTION:

Pope — A Tuesday commentary on Pope John Paul II’s opposition to the Iraq war said William J. Bennett accompanied Michael Novak on a trip to the Vatican. Bennett was not on the trip.

I remember reporting this one at the time, and giving credit to Bill Quick for having been the force behind the correction. But the L.A. Times version of the article is gone, hidden behind a pay wall. And the version available from Scheer’s own web site? You guessed it: the mistake never happened. Here’s what the column still says, completely uncorrected:

In February 2003, hawkish columnist Michael Novak and self-appointed morals czar William J. Bennett were dispatched to a Rome meeting with Vatican officials arranged by the State Department to explain why the invasion of Iraq would be a “just war” of self-defense.

There are many more examples I could give you. Here’s another. A November 10, 2004 L.A. Times correction read:

CORRECTION:

Bush’s victory — In Robert Scheer’s Tuesday column, President Bush’s 136,000-vote margin in Ohio was described as representing “.001% of the national electorate.” It should have said it was .001 of the national electorate.

But in Robert Scheer’s archives, his column still has the percentage sign. That makes Bush’s margin of victory in Ohio seem 1/100 as impressive as it really was. Funny how that works.

This guy doesn’t care about the truth, at all. He just leaves these falsehoods scattered all over his archives, waiting to mislead hapless readers foolish enough to trust in Robert Scheer’s integrity.

Not only are Scheer’s errors airbrushed in his archives, the L.A. Times itself has airbrushed at least one other Scheer error. On LEXIS, an October 4 Scheer piece bears the following correction:

CORRECTION:

Same-sex marriage: In a commentary Tuesday about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto of a bill giving legal protection to same-sex couples, Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) was incorrectly identified as a state senator.

But on the L.A. Times web site, it’s as if the error never happened. The L.A. Times version of the October 4 piece has no appended correction. It has simply airbrushed the error to make it seem as if Scheer got it right all along:

“He cannot claim to support fair and equal legal protection for same-sex couples and veto the very bill that would have provided it to them,” said the bill’s author, state Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco).

Ditto the version available in the archives linked from Scheer’s web site. It just didn’t happen. Scheer never made the mistake to begin with.

Sure, it’s a relatively minor error. But it’s not just a typo. It’s an error that could cause some readers to conclude that the columnist doesn’t know what he’s talking about — after all, he doesn’t know his state senators from his state assemblymen. Columnists and newspapers that print erroneous assertions shouldn’t simply pretend that the mistake never happened.

Still, Scheer’s worst offense is not his airbrushing of minor errors. It’s continuing to publish false assertions that harm people’s reputations, and stubbornly refusing to correct those assertions even when his own (former) employer found it necessary to do so. This strikes me as simply dishonest. But for Robert Scheer, that’s par for the course.