In a July 31 article on possible Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson's June fundraising totals, Washington Post staff writer Matthew Mosk reported that Thompson “will file the first accounting of his potential presidential campaign's fundraising activity with the Internal Revenue Service tomorrow, and the report will show that the enterprise raised between $3.1 million and $3.2 million in June, according to sources familiar with the Thompson operation.” But the article failed to note that Thompson's fundraising haul falls short of a June goal of $5 million the Post itself reported at the time that the campaign had set.

A June 21 Post article reported that “in the months since Thompson's name first bounced around Washington as a possible Republican candidate for president, the actor has slowly built interest with well-placed leaks about a growing political staff, developing campaign strategy and a $5 million fundraising target.” According to a separate June 21 Post article, the campaign suggested that the $5 million fundraising “target” was for the month of June:

Campaign aides initially signaled that he would raise $5 million in June but later worked to play down expectations. The anticipated announcement date for the campaign has shifted repeatedly, with sources close to Thompson first predicting July 4, then mid-July, late July and now early September.

Furthermore, a May 31 Post article reported on a conference call in which the campaign instructed a group of 100 Thompson backers each to raise $46,000, for a total of $4.6 million:

By tomorrow, aides said, the actor and former senator from Tennessee will incorporate a committee called Friends of Fred Thompson and will begin actively raising money for a White House bid. He launched the fundraising effort this week in a conference call with more than 100 supporters, whom he has dubbed his “First Day Founders.”

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On the fundraising call Tuesday, donors were instructed to begin submitting checks to the campaign dated June 4. Each was asked to collect $4,600 from 10 couples -- $2,300 per person is the maximum allowed under federal law.

The Hill similarly reported on that conference call in a June 6 article headlined “Fred's Founders seek $4.6M”:

They're called the First-Day Founders, and they constitute the initial fundraising infrastructure for ex-Sen. Fred Thompson's (R-Tenn.) White House bid.

The founding group is made up of 100 people, each of whom ponied up the primary maximum $2,300 on June 1, the day Friends of Fred Thompson Inc., the former senator's exploratory committee, filed with the Tennessee secretary of state, allowing the committee to start raising money.

The First-Day Founders took part in a conference call Friday, during which they were asked to raise a total of $46,000 for the effort, according to a source in Nashville.

That amount reflects 20 donors maxing out the federally allowed $2,300 for a primary campaign. And if the First-Day Founders come through, Thompson presumably would start off with $4.6 million in “seed money.”

However, since Thompson's June fundraising numbers have become public, the Post -- in three reports on the subject -- has not noted that the numbers fell short.

Aside from the July 31 article, an entry that same day on the Post blog The Trail, which was published in the August 1 edition of the paper, asserted that Thompson “got a big home-state boost in raising more than $3.4 million in contributions toward his still-undeclared presidential campaign.” The article, written by Mosk and Chris Cillizza, noted several of Thompson's high-profile donors, but failed to note that the campaign had fallen short of the goal reported by the Post itself.

A subsequent entry on The Trail from the morning of August 1 -- also written by Mosk -- again noted Thompson's fundraising total for June without noting that it fell short of expectations, asserting, “Thompson revealed that he had raised $3.4 million during June for his anticipated campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, relying heavily on donors from his home state of Tennessee.” The article did state that "[t]he argument is on" over whether Thompson's fundraising effort “was a solid showing for an undeclared candidate for the presidency or a disappointing performance from someone projected as a top-tier contender.”

By contrast, a July 31 analysis by Associated Press staff writer Liz Sidoti, which appeared on the Post's website, noted the contrast between Thompson's goal and how much he actually raised, stating that he "[r]eported collecting nearly $3.5 million in his first fundraising month, surpassing comparable totals of some likely rivals but lagging his backers' original $5 million goal."