I am a couple of days late to this correction in the local Dog Trainer regarding its March 8 story about Justice Scalia:

A March 8 Section A article about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated that William Devlin, founder of the Urban Family Council of Philadelphia, said he had invited Scalia to speak at a dinner the council was holding. Devlin went on to say the dinner was in part to raise money for council activities — including his legal challenge against a local gay rights ordinance. But, Devlin said, after Scalia accepted the invitation, Supreme Court staff contacted Devlin and made the justice’s appearance conditional on the understanding that the dinner would not make money. Betty Jean Wolfe, the group’s president, was not interviewed for the article. But she has since told The Times that the dinner was never intended to be a fundraiser, either for Devlin’s lawsuit or any other purpose. As the story reported, the dinner honored retiring Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia and it did not make any money.

As described in this post, this is not the first correction issued by the Dog Trainer with respect to this story. As Justice Scalia pointed out in his memorandum on the recusal issue, the paper initially reported (falsely) that Scalia had spoken to “an advocacy group waging a legal battle against gay rights.” The paper subsequently ate crow. As Justice Scalia explains:

Five days later, in a weekend edition, the paper printed (at the insistence of the Council) a few-line retraction acknowledging that this asserted fact was wrong — as though it was merely one incidental fact in a long piece, rather than the central fact upon which the long piece was based, and without which there was no story.

It’s weird that the corrections that keep dribbling out from this story all make Scalia’s position look better. The question is obvious: why did the original story have so many errors that made Scalia look bad?

Inquiring minds want to know.

By the way, Justice Scalia’s memorandum alluded to Ms. Wolfe’s accusation that there were more errors in the piece. A Dog Trainer reporter denied this to me. I am still looking into this.

(Cross-posted at Oh, That Liberal Media.)