>>>What inaccuracies did you spot in the Post article?
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>Well, the entire presentation of a big brouhaha is inaccurate. An earlier Washington Post article even asserted that the Prime Minister had demanded an apology of Afleck rather than shrugging it off.
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>In reality this is a silly little local story about opposition politicians and their patsies trying to embarrass a Prime Minister. A little history: when the Hobbit was about to start filming in NZ, Warner Brothers threatened to move it elsewhere after an Australian carpetbagging Union body invoked delaying processes seeking better terms for actors. Turns out they had little if any mandate from the involved actors but the delays would have torpedoed filming regardless. Typical Australians, right? ;-) The NZ Prime Minister intervened, meeting Warner Brother executives, changing rules and creating special tax incentives to keep filming in NZ. The accusation at the time was that he was sucking up to Hollywood. The current loud shouting was another attempt to embarrass him for being too close to Hollywood after he shrugged off the claims of grievous hurt claimed by minority opposition politicians. Their attempt fell flat- NZ has been involved in lots of Hollywood films and people know that the Hobbit and Argo are fables, not documentaries. The Prime Minister responded sensibly and remains extremely popular. The WP missed all this local context, initially weighing in with the wrong end of the stick about how the PM should be embarrassed and subsequently still misrepresenting what really is a seedy little parochial story. It simply is not news anywhere except in the minds of NZ political tall dwarves.
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>But if you like, consider that falsehoods can come from careful omissions as well as assertions. So:
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>What did you make of the letter released by the Carter Foundation?
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>When the diplomats escaped, who took them in at once? Who took them in after that? Why couldn't they stay in either location for long?
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>When they finally escaped, who got them to the airport and onto a plane without Iranian authorities noticing?
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>In the interests of informing readers I'd have thought that a 2-page serious news article might dedicate at least one sentence to answer such questions precisely rather than beating around the bush and focusing on embittered quotes from a Sociology Professor nobody ever heard of, or maybe that's an old-fashioned view: all that matters now is how people FEEL. ;-)
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>Regards,J

I am not disagreeing with any of what you say, and thank you for the background to the news story. Where I still have an issue is the characterization of the Post blog entry as "full of inaccuracies." In regard to a piece of journalism, that phrase means the article contains factual errors. That remains a serious charge even in a time of diminished journalistic expectations. A news article generally does not contain every bit of backstory that might pertain to the news event (in this case factual error(s) in "Argo"), even if that might be illuminating. Wanting a different tone or more background information is a completely different thing from printing factual errors.

I do not wish to go on and on about this and will let it drop. I just think the distinction is an important one.