Oh my. John Solomon just keeps it comin’.
Via Greg Sargent, I see that John Solomon has rewritten the lead to his follow-up piece on Harry Reid. The distorting lead I pointed out yesterday has been replaced by a more narrative approach.
But he didn’t stop there. And really, why should he? It’s so much easier to cherry pick facts to boost your story than submit to the drudgery of countervailing details.
So here’s another example of Solomon’s bamboozlement. And, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to take you once again into the weedy specifics of this story. But it’s worth it, believe me.
Yesterday, we reported that there was a major detail missing from Solomon’s story: Reid didn’t pay for the seats to the boxing matches because they were credentials given to him by the Nevada Athletic Commission – not tickets. Credentials are not for sale. In fact, it is against Nevada state law for the commission to accept money for them.
This point was first made Wednesday by Bob Arum, the boxing promoter who gave Reid and Sen. McCain the tickets, in The Las Vegas Review Journal. We later confirmed what Arum said with the Executive Director of the Nevada Athletic Commission. Arum also said that in the past, when Reid got tickets, he reimbursed whoever provided them.
Here’s what Arum said …
Boxing promoter Bob Arum said Reid and McCain also sat in ticketed seating at about three matches each but paid for their tickets “invariably.” Arum said McCain and Reid’s seats at the Hopkins-de la Hoya fight, on the other hand, were credentials from the commission, not tickets from Arum. But McCain, who brought his wife to the fight, sent Arum a check for the price of two ringside seats.
Arum said he didn’t know what to do with the money.
“Those credentials cannot be sold,” he said. “There’s no price on them. (They are given to) governors, attorney generals, boxing commissioners of other states. … It’s illegal to accept money for a credential.”
Now here’s what happened to Arum’s point after it got run through the Solomonizer …
Boxing promoter Bob Arum said when Reid did go to boxing matches in earlier years he always paid for tickets.
Ethics experts said the fact that Reid paid for past tickets, then accepted free seats from the commission after he became a Senate leader and was pushing legislation affecting the sport only worsened his ethical picture.
But that’s not what Arum said at all. Arum was talking about a key distinction: the free seats Reid received were the result of credentials, not tickets. Arum is saying that Reid didn’t pay for credentials, because he couldn’t. But when he got tickets, which he could pay for, he did.
Solomon looks at that, ignores the whole tickets versus credentials issue, and makes Reid’s decision to pay or not pay a matter of when he became Minority Leader.
Solomon apparently thinks the tickets/credentials issue is too deep in the weeds for AP readers, which is fine. But he’s happy to resurrect it to make a claim for which there appears to be no basis whatsoever. Solomon takes a case in which he got caught getting a key fact wrong and uses his error for yet another bamboozle.
Keep ’em comin’, John!
