New York (CNN) When the president says it, does that mean it's automatically worth publishing? The question has vexed the news media for more than a year, rising to the surface yet again on Wednesday with an op-ed by Donald Trump in USA Today.

Fact-checkers immediately identified a number of whoppers in the piece, while various members of the media questioned the newspaper's decision to run it at all. Whether it's written by the president or a writer toiling in obscurity, the critics argued, the editorial standards still apply.

"The president does not have a free pass," former New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal told CNN. "Our standard at the Times was that we do not print things that we knew not to be true, whether it was a letter, an editorial, a column or an op-ed. If a letter writer said something that was false, we would require them to correct or we wouldn't run it."

Marjorie Pritchard, the op-ed page editor at the Boston Globe, echoed that.

"All submissions must go through a robust and rigorous editing process, which includes fact-checking and attribution," Pritchard told CNN in an email. "The op-ed page presents varying opinions on issues of the day, but they need to be based on facts, not on inaccuracies or outright lies. It is crucial that we hold the president to the same standards we demand of other contributors."

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