Schiavo Memogate Author Fesses Up
For those of you unfamiliar with this story, it is summarized thusly: a memo of "talking points" concerning the political benefits of supporting Terri Schiavo found its way into a reporter's hands. It was claimed that the memo was from the Republican leadership.
The blogosphere quickly pounced on this, pointing out that it was unsigned, unverified, and wasn't even on Senate letterhead. Another lazy forgery, in other words.
Turns out, neither side was wholly right. Today, the Washington Post reports that its author has stepped forward:
Mike Allen - April 7th, 2005 The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator said in an interview last night.
The memo was clearly in poor taste, but a Senate aide exercising poor judgement independent of the party leadership is hardly a scandal.
Most of the blogosphere has focused on the reporting of Mike Allen. As John Hinderaker points out, Allen's earlier piece on the matter is looking more and more inaccurate with each revelation. In it, he describes the memo as something "declared" by "Republican officials." He then refers to it as "distributed to Republican senators by party leaders."
Andrew Sullivan offers the laughable defense that the original reporting was "vague." Actually, vague would've been nice; the problem is that it was too specific, pointing the finger squarely at the Republican leadership. Is vague a new synonym for "inaccurate"?
Meanwhile, the rest of the blogosphere's still waiting to see that much-lauded process of mainstream media verification and fact-checking. Any day now, I'm sure.
» April 7th, 2005
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