Anne Hull

WaPo Recycles Myth of Reagan Inaction on AIDS

On the front page of Tuesday’s Washington Post, reporter Anne Hull recalled the devastating trail of the AIDS epidemic as marked by the moving of the D.C.-based Whitman-Walker AIDS clinic. But deep in the piece, in the 35th paragraph, Hull unearthed an old anti-Reagan myth:

Several blocks from the clinic was the White House, where President Ronald Reagan had barely uttered the word "AIDS" in his eight years in office. In 1989, the Centers for Disease Control reported 22,082 deaths from AIDS.

Is it fair for reporters to imply that Reagan and his alleged inaction and silence were responsible? Brent Bozell said no when this myth started up again after Reagan died in 2004: