Sometimes it is hard for a newspaper to say “We made an error,” but it was finally said Nov. 14 when the Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa., apologized for calling President Abraham Lincoln’s majestic Gettysburg Address “silly” and suggesting that it deserved “a veil of oblivion” when the event was originally reported in 1863.

“Seven score and ten years ago, the forefathers of this media institution brought forth to its audience a judgment so flawed, to tainted by hubris, so lacking in the perspective history would bring, that it cannot remain unaddressed in our archives,” was how the editorial staff phrased it....