For the second time in three years, the Washington Post has quietly “updated” one of the most consequential fact checks in the history of American politics – its October 2020 article undercutting reports that Hunter Biden arranged a dinner meeting between one of his foreign business clients and his father, who was then vice president of the United States. …

But Kessler’s fact check has not aged well. Just last week Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, testified before Congress that the article was “not correct reporting.” Instead of retracting the article – as the Post did with some of its debunked Russiagate coverage – or running a straightforward correction, the paper has appended a series of “updates” to its reporting.

“The Washington Post and other media have tried to squelch the scandal of Joe Biden potentially using his high office to enrich himself and his family,” said a congressional investigator for a GOP-led committee. “Almost nobody is fact-checking these biased fact checkers, and they carry a lot of weight and authority.”

[The fact-checking industry has not covered itself in glory over the last seven years. Then again, neither have politicians, but that’s almost beside the point. Simply taking a politician’s word as a “fact” is a fatal error for such efforts, and too often that’s how these are handled. — Ed]