Steve Bennen and Kos highlight today an example of one of the worst tendencies in modern journalism. In the interest of time and space, journalists paraphrase politicians. And that would be fine, of course, if they did so accurately. The problem, however, is that often they do not. Sometimes, in the process of paraphrasing they actually get things backwards.
Here's how the AP characterized comments by Barack Obama on the war in Iraq:
Despite the Iraq war’s unpopularity, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday that Congress lacks the votes to force a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops and will focus instead on putting a ceiling on the number deployed.
“One way of ending the war would be setting a timetable. We’re about 15 votes short. Right now it doesn’t look like we’re going to get that many votes,” Obama said, referring to the number needed to override an expected veto by President Bush.
That sounds like Obama was admitting political defeat before the debate in congress had even begun, and blogs all around the progressive 'sphere were quick to jump all over him. The thing is, the AP got it wrong. Very, very wrong.
I tell you what. I think that we want to get everybody on board to bring this war to a close…I want to be honest with you about where we are in Congress right now. We are gonna’ have a series of debates about funding the next phase of this war. And there are gonna’ be a couple of options.
One option is to just give the president a blank check, and to say ‘whatever you say Mr. President here, you keep on doing what you’re doing.’ I don’t think that is an acceptable option. Right now the question — one way of ending the war would be to impose a timetable where we would have all our combat troops out. And I had a bill that provided that timetable of March 30 th. We passed it with a majority voting for that in the Senate and in the House but the problem was the president vetoed that bill and to overcome a veto in the senate you gotta’ have 67 votes so were about 15 votes short. We were hoping to persuade enough Republican senators and Republican representatives to change their positions in order to override the President’s veto. And ill be honest with you right now, it doesn’t look like were going to get that many votes, but I think it’s important for everybody here to put pressure on Republican congressmen and Senators who have not recognized that were on a failed course so that we can at least see more votes on that bill.The other thing that were also gonna’ try to do – I don’t know if everybody’s aware of this but those people who have been sent to Iraq have been on the kinds of rotations without rest and without proper training that the army itself says is unacceptable. We have people who are spending more time in Iraq than they are back home retraining and getting the rest that they need. And so what we’re going to try to introduce is legislation that says you have to at least give people a one year break for every year served in Iraq. And if were able to get that passed, and get sixty votes for that, then at least that would put a ceiling on how many troops could be sent there at any given time. So those are some of the approaches that were gonna’ try to take even before George Bush leaves office, but all that is going to require some pressure from all of you on our senators and your congressman, you know, who are really important.
That's not admitting defeat; that's calling for a fight!
Thankfully, Kos has posted an update, admitting that he made a mistake and reminding himself and his community to double check the transcript before jumping down someone's throat. The problem, of course, is that the story is already out there, and many people will never read the update and learn the truth.
My initial reaction to this was to fault the blogosphere. Sometimes it is just too damn quick. But then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I had it backwards. Sure thing, the blogosphere took the story and ran with it, a reaction that undoubtedly brought it to the attention of many more people. But along the way it brought it to the attention of people who knew it was not right, setting in motion a process that rapidly led to its correction, even by the AP.
Way back when, Madison made the argument that by "enlarging the sphere" we would create a diversity of opinion in the country that would eventually allow us to get closer to the truth. This story is an example of that in action. Too bad for me that it came at the end of a long day of discussing the concept!
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