A sign of the end times?

This doesn't happen often. The Huffington Post is fisking a Washington Post article which criticized the Trump administration and its immigration and related related policies.

It began a couple of weeks ago when the Washington Post ran U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question by Kevin Sieff.

PHARR, Tex. — On paper, he’s a devoted U.S. citizen.

His official American birth certificate shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas. He spent his life wearing American uniforms: three years as a private in the Army, then as a cadet in the Border Patrol and now as a state prison guard.

But when Juan, 40, applied to renew his U.S. passport this year, the government’s response floored him. In a letter, the State Department said it didn’t believe he was an American citizen.

As he would later learn, Juan is one of a growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question. The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown.

But is it true? Apparently not. The article is now festooned with editorial corrections and disclaimers. The Huffington Post investigated the Washington Post's reporting and found it materially incorrect and misleading. From Bombshell Washington Post Story On Trump Passport Crackdown Withheld, Distorted Key Facts by Roque Planas.

It would seem that if you are constantly being assailed for printing fake news, you might want to be extra careful about not printing what appears to be fake news. But what do I know. From Planas.

AUSTIN, Texas ― On Aug. 29, The Washington Post published a bombshell report alleging that the Trump administration had orchestrated a campaign to systematically deny passports to Latinos born along the border.

“The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Latinos along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown,” the paper wrote.

But the Post withheld key data, mischaracterized information and lobbed an allegation of fraud at a deceased doctor without speaking to his family members, who complained publicly, HuffPost has found. The piece has been substantially altered three times, including Thursday after multiple queries from HuffPost.

The paper cited a number of specific policies to support its allegation of a crackdown: supposedly heightened scrutiny of birth certificates signed by midwives suspected of peddling fraudulent documents, supposedly unprecedented passport denials to people born far from the border, and a supposedly new focus on babies delivered by one Texas doctor.

All three practices predate Trump.

The Post’s allegation that the administration is increasingly scrutinizing birth certificates signed by midwives suspected of peddling fraudulent documents ― the basis for much of its initial story ― is particularly problematic. This allegation was supported by the observations of several expert lawyers who had witnessed skyrocketing caseloads of passport denials, mostly in South Texas. The story lacked statistics, which the State Department initially failed to provide.

But when the State Department provided HuffPost the raw number of passport denials in suspect midwife cases along the border, those numbers contradicted the Post’s report. The number of denials steadily dropped, from a peak of 1,465 in 2015 to 971 last year. As of last month, the State Department appeared to be on pace to end 2018 with still fewer denials than last year. The total rejections in these cases since Trump took office number fewer than 1,600 ― not thousands.

This is the type of revelation that circulates extensively on conservative websites. Pretty unnatural, but promising, to see it in the HuffPost. Reassuring in the sense that it would be nice if our news media began functioning as investigative reporters again rather than as Democrats with bylines. There are plenty of targets in both parties.

Here is wishing HuffPost well in its possible resurrected mission of reporting facts.