I worried some time ago, when the Bush administration had been caught editing a press briefing by Ari Fleischer (where he warned that those critical of the US need to "watch it") that the White House website was vulnerable in a way that previous White House documents weren't--that is, anyone inside the administration could "tweak" the official record to make themselves or their boss look better than they originally did. I was confirmed of this when I went looking for the transcript of a press briefing in 2002 regarding the administration's unusual definition of "bipartisan support" as it related to the Homeland Security debate--I had used the transcript in a class after it had been issued, and within a year I went back and it was gone. All I had now was a secondary account of the press briefing and not the transcript itself. I worried then about what was being omitted daily given how little attention was paid to the sanctity of the government document. Fortunately, someone has been paying attention, and I only hope that it gets wider attention than it has.
Scott Althaus, a political communications professor and Lalev Leetaru, both at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign have conducted a study for the Cline Center for Democracy, also at UIUC, titled "Airbrushing History, American Style" that scratches the surface of this serious problem. They found, for example, that five White House press releases in 2003 relating to the listing of members of the "Coalition of the Willing" were presently not all available at the White House website, having been removed between 2004 and 2006. The press releases that were still available had been altered from their original form. Their conclusion:
These findings suggest a pattern of revision and removal from the public record that spans several years, from 2003 through at least 2005. Instead of issuing a series of revised lists with new dates, or maintaining an updated master list while preserving copies of the old ones, the White House removed original documents, altered them, and replaced them with backdated modifications that only appear to be originals.
It is clear that the pattern they found suggests that the alterations and scrubbing was deliberate.
It is important that what is put up on government servers stays pristine because this manipulation is tempting to whoever is in power, Republican or Democrat. Given how easy wikipedia and blog posting can be changed or altered, I fear a mindset exists that what appears on the web should not be taken as authoritative. What our elected officials say is important to us and future generations of researchers trying to cobble together the "public record." My hope is that this study opens the door to a larger investigation as to the seriousness of this problem.
