Here’s what happened. It turns out Barack Obama went off script during his joint session speech to talk about the origins of the Republican Party. Apparently his knowledge of history is weak off-script, and he made a gaffe: He said Abraham Lincoln was the founder of the Republican Party. Which is wrong. First president? Yes. Founder? No.

Even the New York Times acknowledged the error in its transcript of the speech:

“We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party. But in the middle of a civil war, he was also a leader who looked to the future — a Republican President who mobilized government to build the Transcontinental Railroad — (applause) — launch the National Academy of Sciences, set up the first land grant colleges. (Applause.) And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.”

But what happened when PBS — the taxpayer-funded outlet that conservatives say is liberally biased but liberals say “So what?” — posted its version of the transcript?

“We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. But in the middle of a Civil War, he was also a leader who looked to the future – a Republican president who mobilized government to build the transcontinental railroad; launch the National Academy of Sciences; and set up the first land grant colleges. And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.”

Notice something missing? Like the entire gaffe? The one people watched on national television and that was copied down by the New York Times? Yeah, that one. Gone.

So PBS edited the transcript to remove a potentially-embarrassing gaffe made by the president. No word on whether or not the man responsible for the edit was named Winston Smith.

But maybe PBS didn’t have much to worry about anyway. Outside of transcripts, the media has ignored the gaffe. Which is a very different attitude than it took in September 2008, when Mike Huckabee made the same error.

Time Magazine fact-checked Huckabee’s error at the time:

He gives a good speech, but he’s loose with the facts. He called Abraham Lincoln the “founder” of the Republican Party. Nope. Lincoln was not the founder of the party; he wasn’t even the first Republican nominee (John Fremont was, in 1856). Lincoln was, of course, the first Republican to be elected president.

The author of that fact-check? Jay Carney. The same Jay Carney who now works as Barack Obama’s press secretary. And yet not a word from him either.

Media hypocrisy in its truest form. A non-candidate Republicans makes an error and they jump all over it. The president and party nominee makes the same exact error and we get edited transcripts and silence.

Update: Jake Tapper — once again — to the rescue. He not only notes Obama’s gaffe but Carney’s previous fact-checking of Huckabee’s same gaffe. Also, on an interesting note, PBS has re-edited its transcript to include the gaffe. Funny how that happened only when attention was brought to the original edit.