All of this made it even more astounding (as Walter and I will discuss tomorrow) that officials in both Europe and the United States this week demanded Internet platforms clamp down on ordinary posters in response to the crisis, as if the overwhelming majority of the misplaced panic so far hadn’t come from bureaucrats and elected officials playing hot-take telephone with a tragedy.

The events of the last weeks are perfect examples of why we can’t let official truth squads become reality. In times of great anxiety, too few public figures know how to admit, “I don’t know,” and make compounding errors instead. Better to be late and sure, than fast and this week’s New York Times.

*See subsequent article, but I’m not making claims about who’s responsible for the blast — just that a newspaper can’t say it “knew” something it later retracted. The only way to write this, if they weren’t planning on sticking with the story, was to make no claims at all about blame.