Today’s question is for the as-yet-unnamed Reuters editor who wrote the headline on Patricia Wilson’s Treasongate story this afternoon:

LP: A couple years ago President Bush and his beleaguered mouthpiece, Scott McLellan, made clear that if any White House employee were found to be involved in the outing of a CIA operative that person would be fired. In a story released by your agency earlier this afternoon, Bush has now flip-flopped and is saying he’ll only fire the guilty party (Karl Rove) if he’s convicted, which is dramatically different from his initial stance. However, the sanitized, Low-Truth® headline you slapped on the story reads: Bush qualifies firing vow over CIA exposure. Since saying something completely different constitutes “qualifying” in your book, can you give us an example of how far an administration official would have to go for you to employ a term like “changes story,” “reverses field,” or “contradicts self”?

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