You Have Reached A Page That Doesn't Exist

On a reader tip, Powerline finds an ABC News form request:

For a possible Inauguration Day story on ABC News, we are trying to find out if there any military funerals for Iraq war casualties scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 20. If you know of a funeral and whether the family might be willing to talk to ABC News, please fill out the form below:

Reactions to this disturbing plea can be found here, here, and here, but it’s interesting that in this post-Rathergate period, network news operations continue to cover-up their missteps. ABC yanked the page, but not until Capt. Ed archived it on his site.

Most bloggers rarely delete posts, preferring to include updates to reflect changes. This of course provides transparency and helps readers to follow the story, including corrections, additions, etc. Some even point out when punctuation edits are made.

Why can’t the MSM just update its posts to reflect its rethinking?

Something like:

UPDATE: ABC News, upon reflection, realizes its earlier solicitation of a military funeral was a deeply flawed idea and, as Hindrocket at Powerline has pointed out, was offensive to the families of soldiers who sacrificed their lives in Afghanistan, or aided tsunami victims in Indonesia or Sri Lanka, or in training exercises.

As a result, we are rendering the above form inoperable and thank all those readers who have helped us to come to our senses.

Or,

UPDATE: ABC News had a military funeral solicitation form here earlier, since removed because we are receiving what we feel is an unwarranted amount of criticism from various bloggers and e-mailers. Rather than rehash the whole thing over again, we feel the correct course is to delete it from the site and pretend like it never existed. Thank you for your cooperation.

I even have a slogan:

INTERNET POST UPDATES: Providing clarity since 2005.

UPDATE: ABC finds its funeral.

UPDATE II: John Hinderaker at Powerline is tipped about the funeral coverage and concludes:

"The broadcast networks are at war with the Bush administration."