The New York Instances got some warmth over the weekend for an editorial pronouncing President Obama “misspoke” about folks keeping their medical health insurance insurance policies in the event that they appreciated them. Instances public editor Margaret Sullivan addressed the complaints on Monday, and printed a quick safety from editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal.

Sullivan excerpted the flurry of terrible responses in her blog, including a very pointed criticism by way of Greta Van Susteren. Sullivan reached out to Rosenthal for an explanation and that is what he needed to say.

“We have a excessive threshold for whether or not someone lied,” he advised me. The phrase that The Instances used “signifies that he mentioned something that wasn’t true.” Announcing the president lied would have intended one thing totally different, Mr. Rosenthal said — that he knew it was once false and intended to precise the falsehood. “We don’t recognize that,” he said.

And while Sullivan did defend the paper from accusations that it’s been smooth on President Obama, she did acknowledge that “misspoke” might had been reasonably an underestimation.

[photo via Haxorjoe]

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Observe Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac