Will wonders never cease?
Yesterday Politico published a very suspect article claiming, at first, that Ben Carson had lied about a scholarship to West Point. Afterwards Ben Carson ripped, and I do mean ripped, into reporters who tried to question him.
Mr. Carson, the doctor whose soft-spoken and sedate style have made his rise to the top of the Republican presidential field all the more puzzling, abandoned his gentle manner on Friday night and delivered a powerful public scolding of the news media that has begun to question his celebrated biography.
In the process, he turned what has become an almost robotic ritual for candidates under attack — the live and often defensive news conference — into an aggressive confrontation, and at times interrogation, of the reporters’ motives and methods.
But thats not what has me somewhat surprised. What’s surprising is fellow journalists and even those who are running against Ben Carson came to his defense.
Trump had already cut ties with Politico calling it “the dumbest and most slated” news site he has ever seen calling them “losers!”
*Not accurate* in Politico story:
-Carson claimed to have applied to West Point.
-Campaign admitted Carson fabricated history.— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) November 6, 2015
He followed up with:
…[T]here is no evidence in Politico’s story that Carson ever claimed to have applied to West Point…What initially looked like a disaster for Ben Carson could now be a major black eye for Politico.
McKay Coppins from BuzzFeed wrote:
“Politico’s ‘admits fabricating’ headline isn’t really right.”
[U]nwillingness to admit fault plagues Politico’s big story of the day…As all of Twitter — not to mention the Carson campaign — has pointed out, Carson admitted no such [fabrication]…He never applied to West Point … and Politico reported that he had
I've been a reporter for almost 30 years. Politico's Ben Carson story is among the stupidest things I've even seen in print.
— Scott Baker (@bakerlink) November 7, 2015
https://twitter.com/AlexPappas/status/662709092150939648
Politico admits to fabricating headline: https://t.co/bytNcCCCog
— Kendall Breitman (@KendallBreitman) November 6, 2015
If it’s between Politico and Ben Carson, put me in the Ben Carson column please.
I’m a big fan of Ben Carson … I know there’s a media kerfuffle about it … but I can tell you this: I like & trust Ben Carson.
When Politico finally changed the lede they still caught heat from The WaPo’s Dave Weigel:
The new Politico lede remains problematic: Carson just now ‘conceded that he never applied,’ [though] he wrote that in his memoir 23 years ago
It’s good to see reporters and fellow Republican nominee’s coming to Carson’s defense. In the end this was Politico using the Dan Rather/See-BS method of “reporting”. Throw some red meat out there and challenge others to prove it wrong. When they prove it wrong the bell has already been rung so who cares if its all lies. Many times that worked, as it did for Dan Rather for years. But every so often it comes back to bite them in the ass.
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