Remember that possible media bias scandal at the St. Petersburg Times? Here’s the paper’s explanation:

Talk about embarrassing. We’re still adjusting to our recently overhauled system for processing stories here at the SPT, and it showed big time on our website today. It seems that in processing the syndicated column of satirist Andy Borowitz someone mistakenly labeled it to appear on the site as a straight news story. So it appeared online as a normal wire compilation. Headline: “Satan, Rove plot GOP campaign strategy.” Sheepishly, Buzz can confirm Satan and Rove are not in fact plotting anything together that we know of.

The piece was deleted from our website when we realized the mistake, but at least a couple other sites found it and saved it for posterity. The result can be seen here at Hotline on Call and here at Wonkette.

Rove spoke to Online City Editor Kevin McGeever, and was exceptionally gracious. He thought it was funny and noted that he’d been accused of being Satan, but never actually working with Beelzebub. He wanted a copy of the online story for himself.

So it wasn’t bias, just incompetence. We feel so much better.

Rove, Satan And Egg on Our Face [The Buzz/St. Petersburg Times]

Earlier: St. Petersburg ‘Times’: Best Newspaper in America