Posts tagged: Election

Fast and Curious: Pjamasphere Reporting on the O’Donnell Documentary Story

By , November 1, 2010 3:20 pm

The Pjamasphere is a-Twitter with the news that the MSM failed to show Christine O’Donnell’s 30-minute ad–twice–something that would tick me off if it were true. But the claim doesn’t appear to be, at least based on the sources I’ve read.

I found the story on Instapundit, who linked to the Classical Values blog, which based its story on a short piece on The AtlanticWire, which ran with the reporting of one Philip Rucker of The Washington Post. Let’s start with Rucker. He writes, in the relevant part (all emphasis in this post is mine unless otherwise noted):

The source, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive campaign operations, said the station “forgot to air [O’Donnell’s documentary]” [on Sunday as planned].

So far, so good. But farther down in the piece, Rucker quotes Tim Qualls, executive producer at Delaware Channel 28, a public access station, hardly what you’d call the MSM (okay, that’s not counting MSMBC, whose viewership approximates the population of Delaware):

Tim Qualls, executive producer at Channel 28, said in an interview the ad did not air because O’Donnell’s campaign did not bring a tape to the production studio by the agreed upon deadline. She reserved the time on Thursday, for $2,500, and agreed to bring a tape by Friday at 5 p.m., Qualls said.

“I did not receive a tape until Sunday night at one of my employees’ houses,” Qualls said. “It has nothing to do with us refusing to air it. I just didn’t get the tape by my deadline.”

Qualls added: “It was all their people’s fault.”

He said he is a Republican and had planned to vote for O’Donnell, but the tape situation changed his mind. “She’s lost my vote,” Qualls said.

In short, there was apparently no forgetting involved–unless Qualls is lying, and we have no evidence for that. In fact, the only source in Rucker’s story for the proposition that the station forgot to run the story is an unnamed source who Rucker ties loosely to O’Donnell’s campaign:

The source, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive campaign operations, said the station “forgot to air it.”

The AtlanticWire basically ran with Rucker’s story, minus all of the messy details that contradict the premise captured in The AtlanticWire’s bolded headline for the story:

TV Station ‘Forgets’ to Air O’Donnell’s 30-Minute Ad

So what did Classical Values do with the story? It ran with the station did it meme. Under the bolded headline The Insanestream Media, it reported:

In today’s “the MSM is worse than you thought possible” news, one media outlet is caught on tape plotting to tie Joe Miller to child molesters, while another “forgets” to run Christine O’Donnell’s big 30-minute ad… twice. The day before the election.

In turn, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit linked to Classical Values and offered a typical brief comment:

Truth is stranger than fiction. And, where the nexus between “mainstream” media and political corruption is concerned, it’s worse than would be considered believable in fiction.

Now, I understand that there is some reason to be skeptical of the station’s side of the story, but from the facts/quotes at hand, the O’Donnell campaign’s side of the story doesn’t hold up. For that matter, neither does the reporting of the Pjamasphere–at least on this one.

Full disclosure: I don’t vote in Delaware, but if I could, I would vote O’Donnell simply because I’m in a throw-the-bums-out mood, even if that means a few bad bums take the their recently (tomorrow!) vacant seats. Oh, and I’m a big-C Conservative.

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