The NYT's Sabrina Tavernese and Jeff Zeleny today report the Maliki sidestep as it ought to be reported-- as a lame cover-up:

Diplomats from the United States Embassy in Baghdad spoke to Mr. Maliki's advisers on Saturday, said an American official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss what he called diplomatic communications. After that, the government's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, issued a statement casting doubt on the magazine's rendering of the interview.

The statement, which was distributed to media organizations by the American military early on Sunday, said Mr. Maliki's words had been "misunderstood and mistranslated," but it failed to cite specifics.

"Unfortunately, Der Spiegel was not accurate," Mr. Dabbagh said Sunday by telephone. "I have the recording of the voice of Mr. Maliki. We even listened to the translation."

But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki's office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki's interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama's position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.

The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki's comments by The Times: "Obama's remarks that -- if he takes office -- in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq."

He continued: "Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq."

By unimpressive contrast, the WP's Sudarsan Raghavan and Debbi Wilgoren took the lazy way out, stenographically copying the Maliki's spokesman's denial and repeating Spiegel's boilerplate "stands by its interview."

If I were in the business of writing textbooks, the contrast would be my choice for a textbook case of careful vs. perfunctory reporting.