Here's what the Seattle Times said:

Sen. Maria Cantwell calls our attention to a law, signed by President Obama, allowing Cuba to buy U.S. farm produce and pay after the goods are shipped.  The law reverses a Treasury ruling during the Bush years that Cuba had to pay in advance — a ruling that stopped the trade altogether.

(Emphasis added.)

And here are the facts

Many Americans think their government's 45-year-old embargo blocks all trade with the communist government, but the United States is the top supplier of food and agricultural products to Cuba.  In fact, many Cubans depend on rations grown in Arkansas and North Dakota for their rice and beans.

(Again, emphasis added.)

The US Department of Agriculture has numbers, and other basic facts, about our agricultural exports to Cuba here.

(I discovered those facts by using an obscure research technique: I searched, using Google, with this search string: "US + exports + Cuba".  I apologize for revealing this secret technique, but it seemed necessary for this post.)

But I could have learned those facts from reading the New York Times, or even the Seattle Times, which has covered Senator Cantwell's efforts to expand agricultural exports to Cuba.

So, why didn't the editorial writers at the Seattle Times know them?

I don't know the answer to that question, and I am nearly certain that they will not explain they how got something so simple, so wrong.  But I would guess that they got them wrong because they created a "fact" that fit their theories of how the world works, rather than testing their theories against the facts.  It is a mistake that nearly everyone makes at one time or another.  We have all, for instance, known lovers who kept believing the most unlikely things about their loves, long after the sad truths were obvious to those less partial.

Many "mainstream" news organizations — definitely including the Seattle Times — are now especially prone to this kind of mistake because they have become ideologically narrower over the last decade.  They are much less tolerant of moderates and conservatives than they once were, and, I would guess, much less likely to seek out opposing views.

Am I saying that the Times has become closed-minded?  That's too harsh a judgment, but I would say they have been moving in that direction.  And that is unfortunate for all of us, but especially for our monopoly newspaper.

Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.

(Is selling food on credit to Cuba a good idea?  Probably not.  At least not until they compensate American owners for property the Communist regime seized a half century ago.  And I have my doubts about whether they are a really great credit risk.

Humberto Fontova has an illustrated post, giving his own reaction to this Seattle Times blunder.)