Deadspin Reporter On Gardner Football Story: ‘If It’s Wrong, It’s My Fault’

Deadspin is under fire after it published a story that alleged Colorado GOP Senate nominee Cory Gardner never actually played high school football, as he said he did, and Gardner’s campaign quickly produced photo evidence that the story was bunk.

Dave McKenna, the reporter who wrote the story and who has a history of debunking politicians’ claims about their sports careers, stopped just short of acknowledging his story was wrong but says, “If it’s wrong, it’s my fault.”

“It’s my responsibility to get everything and to the extent that anything in there is not right, that’s my fault and nobody else’s,” he told the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple.

Deadspin has not issued a correction but instead refashioned the story with an extensive “update” on Wednesday night, as the Gardner campaign hounded the news outlet over the story and the story’s primary source told the Denver Post that his comments to Deadspin had been mischaracterized.

UPDATE: Gardner campaign spokesman Alex Siciliano sent the following, presented in its entirety, via email: “Cory Gardner played football from Junior High through Sophomore year in high school.” Eli Stokols of FOX-31 in Denver is reporting the Gardner campaign told him, “Gardner played football through soph year of high school, never played varsity.” Reached Wednesday night at his home, Chuck Pfalmer, longtime stats keeper for Gardner’s alma mater, Yuma High School, and a primary source for the story, told me: “Cory did play football for three years” in high school, and that his records show that Gardner spent his junior year “on varsity.” During a lengthy conversation about Yuma High football on Tuesday, Pfalmer repeatedly said Gardner had not played football at the school.

Wemple called Deadspin’s decision to “update” rather than correct the story “that squirrelly refuge of web reporting.”

Image via Twitter.