Editorial Board, The Washington Post; The National Archives was wrong to alter history. Fortunately, it reversed course.
"This editorial has been updated.
IN
AN era of “fake news,” “alternative facts” and other assaults on the
very idea of truth, you would expect the National Archives — devoted to
the preservation of the nation’s history — to be at the forefront of
those pushing back. “The National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA) is the nation’s record keeper,” the government agency proudly announces
on its website. How utterly depressing it was, then, to discover on
Friday that the Archives had gone into the business of altering history.
And
how reassuring to read the Archives’ forthright — and, for Washington,
extraordinary — statement on Saturday: “We made a mistake. . . . We have
removed the current display. . . . We apologize.”
The Post’s Joe Heim reported
Friday that the Archives made numerous alterations to a photograph
included in an exhibit dedicated to the 100th anniversary of women’s
suffrage. The photo shows the massively attended Women’s March held in
January 2017 to protest President Trump’s inauguration. But Archives
curators altered signs being carried by the women to delete references
to Mr. Trump — and thereby they seriously distorted the meaning of the
event. “A placard that proclaims ‘God Hates Trump’ has ‘Trump’ blotted
out so that it reads ‘God Hates,’ ” The Post reported. But “God Hates”
was not the message of the protester carrying that sign. Another sign
that reads “Trump & GOP — Hands Off Women” has the word ‘Trump”
blurred out.
In
their initial weak defense, Archives officials noted that they had not
altered articles they preserve for safekeeping, only a photograph for a
temporary exhibit. We did not find that reassuring, as we said in the
first published version of this editorial. Photo alteration long has
been the preserve of authoritarian governments, most famously Soviet
dictator Josef Stalin, who erased comrades from historical photographs one by one as he had them executed.
The
United States government should never play the same game, even on a
small scale. The goal in this case may have been not to irritate the
snowflake in chief residing up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Archives.
After all, the Women’s March harks back to one of the foundational lies
of the Trump presidency, when he falsely insisted, and insisted that his
officials likewise falsely insist, that his inauguration crowd was the
largest of all time. Mr. Trump’s refusal to back down then set the
pattern for his presidency: Lies are acceptable, and evidence can be
ignored.
Rather
than remind anyone of such unpleasantness, the Archives chose to
falsify history and pretend that the Women’s March had nothing to do
with Mr. Trump. That, as we wrote, offered a terrible lesson to young
visitors to the exhibit about how democracies deal with news, with
history — with truth.
Now
the Archives has presented a far more uplifting lesson. Admitting and
correcting a mistake are usually a lot harder for any of us than erring
in the first place. But in their statement, officials did not flinch.
The Archives will replace the altered image “as soon as possible with
one that uses the unaltered image. We apologize, and will immediately
start a thorough review of our exhibit policies and procedures so that
this does not happen again.”
