In terms of consequences and impact, it may not rate too high. But in terms of sheer, concentrated derp, this tale from the the Daily Mining Gazette out of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, may be one of the biggest journalistic goofs in maybe forever. We covered the initial round of the story a few weeks ago. But here’s TPM Reader JL’s update from this morning …
This is strange…my local paper did an interview with MI-1st congressional district democrat challenger (to republican incumbent Dan Benishek) Jerry Cannon in which the reporter, evidently, interviewed someone over the phone who represented himself as Mr. Cannon, but wasn’t Mr. Cannon.
The interviewee indicated his opposition to and willingness to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And the paper printed that. This caught the attention of the Cannon campaign who called the paper saying this interview never happened. Mr. Cannon, in fact, is a big supporter of the ACA. And the paper is chalking it all up to the reporter just dialing the wrong number.
If you’ve seen All the President’s Men, this may remind you of that humorous scene in which Woodward and Bernstein knock on the door of a key Watergate player, find her amazingly forthcoming about her views on the scandal and then finally realize, crestfallen and an hour into the interview, that they’re just talking to some random women who isn’t involved with the scandal at all but has just been reading their earlier reporting and is jazzed that they’re so interested in her take.
Yesterday, the DMG management came forward to take their lumps …
The management of The Daily Mining Gazette has no doubt Neese spoke to someone that morning who made the comments printed. But apparently the call was made to a wrong number.
For the past several weeks the Gazette has searched computer records of all phone calls made from the editorial offices on that day. The Gazette has found no record of a call placed to any number associated with the Cannon campaign.
The Gazette believes those comments attributed to Gen. Cannon were indeed made by someone else.
A correction of the Jan.16 article appears on page 3A of today’s edition.
It does seem like the error must have been made in good faith, if for no other reason that it’s simply too ridiculous as an actual attempt to misinform. But I’m curious whether the person at the wrong number actually identified himself as Cannon or whether Neese, thinking he was talking to Cannon, genuinely thought he confirmed this but was actually just talking to some random dude who wanted to rant about Obamacare because of what he heard on Fox last night.
