The media like to see themselves as society’s accountability police, constantly on the alert to prevent government officials or corporate leaders from getting off the hook. Whatever the issue, the media want answers. They want explanations. They want consequences. The public must understand what went wrong, they say, if only to prevent it from happening again. Funny, though, how that doesn’t apply to them.

Take for example The Associated Press’ story of July 9 that reported British Prime Minister Tony Blair had said the Arab-Israeli conflict was partly to blame for the London bombings. Here’s what AP reported:

“I think this type of terrorism has very deep roots,” Blair said. “As well as dealing with the consequences of this — trying to protect ourselves as much as any civil society can — you have to try to pull it up by its roots,” he said.

That meant boosting understanding between people of difference religions, helping people in the Middle East see a path to democracy and easing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, he said.

Understandably, that report sent shockwaves around the world, since tying Islamic terror to the Arab-Israeli conflict is tantamount to saying democratic Israel has no right to defend its existence against Palestinian terror. What could Tony be thinking? was the reaction in the blogosphere and on cable news shows on Saturday.

Turns out, though, that Blair never said it. Here’s The Associated Press backtracking on Sunday:

Correction: Bombings-Blair story

LONDON — In a July 9 story about Prime Minister Tony Blair’s comments on overcoming global terrorism, The Associated Press erroneously reported that he spoke of easing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Blair did not specifically mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.

That was it. One paragraph. No explanation. No apology even. But inquiring minds want to know, How the heck did this happen?! How did the reporter covering this story get the idea that Blair mentioned Arabs and Israelis when he did not? What was it that made AP make this jump. They aren’t telling.

The media are the world’s best second-guessers and Monday morning quarterbacks when it comes to the people they cover. They demand to know who knew what and when after every calamitous news story. The latest such feeding frenzy involves what the British government should have known about terrorist plans to bomb London’s buses and subways.

The same thing happened in this country after 9/11. After a few days of commiserating with the rest of the nation the media launched into a massive blame game that included the infamous “BUSH KNEW” headline in the New York Post.

At every step of the war on terror when the going got a bit tough, the media wanted to know who was responsible and who should pay. No WMD? How did we miscalculate? What agency is to blame? Let’s have a hearing. Delay in getting Humvee armor to Iraq? Who’s to blame? Whose head should roll? How dare they?

But the media are strangely quiet when it comes to their own mistakes. The AP puts its one-paragraph correction on the wire and figures that’s that. But that’s not enough. We want someone to explain it. How, in the course of the reporting and editing process can something made up from whole cloth get into the final version of an international story.

Give us some answer’s, AP.

Likewise, The New York Times, which last week had to run a correction after it inexplicably added content to a guest column by an Army reservist, has some explaining to do. Here’s their correction of July 8:

Editors’ Note

The Op-Ed page in some copies of Wednesday’s newspaper carried an incorrect version of [an] article about military recruitment. The article also briefly appeared on NYTimes.com before it was removed. The writer, an Army reserve officer, did not say, “Imagine my surprise the other day when I received orders to report to Fort Campbell, Ky., next Sunday,” nor did he characterize his recent call-up to active duty as the precursor to a “surprise tour of Iraq.” That language was added by an editor and was to have been removed before the article was published. Because of a production error, it was not. The Times regrets the error.

There are so many questions that arise from this that it’s hard to know where to start. First of all, why would an editor add such content to a guest column? Did he call the reservist and interview him? Did he tell him some of his comments needed amplification and then OK the added quotes? Apparently not. He just made them up. Again, how does this happen? By what rules of reporting and editing does this take place in any responsible newsroom? It is not a “production error” when the editor forgets to take out the completely made-up content he added to a guest column.

But, like the Associated Press, The Times simply added its cryptic correction to a rerun of the corrected column and let it go at that. Not good enough.

All you newspaper ombudsmen and “public editors” out there need to start earning your pay. Demand that your newsrooms explain these mess-ups so the public can understand what went wrong. You demand it of everyone else in society. Demand it of yourselves.

Jon Ham is vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of its newspaper, Carolina Journal.