Hey Amateurs, Stand Back and We'll Show You How the Professionals Do It

After all, they have multiple layers of painstaking editorial fact-checking, right?

Townhall columnist (and hottie) Amanda Carpenter made short work of the bogus "McCain donor irregularity" article that was on the front page of the Washington Post today. A few hours later, WaPo fessed up:

Correction to This Article An earlier version of this story about campaign donations that Florida businessman Harry Sargeant III raised for Sen. John McCain, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton incorrectly identified three individuals as being among the donors Sargeant solicited on behalf of McCain. Those donors -- Rite Aid manager Ibrahim Marabeh, and lounge owners Nadia and Shawn Abdalla -- wrote checks to Giuliani and Clinton, not McCain. Also, the first name of Faisal Abdullah, a McCain donor, was misspelled in some versions of the story.

Actually, now that I've given it a second look, this is a different correction than the one that ran earlier. That original version, which omits the prevarication that this story was really about Sargeant all along, can be seen at this post by Amanda.

As she writes, this completely eviscerates the story. There's only one "unlikely donor" left, which means there is no there there, at least when it comes to McCain. The author of the piece, Matthew Mosk, might have had a point when it comes to the bundler collecting from unusual sources. But this was clearly supposed to be a hit-piece directed at McCain (just read the first two paragraphs).

How could they have blown this? I think you'll only need one guess.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 05:58 PM

| Access Comments