(MS)NBC: The Scoop That Wasn't
With J$P Video! Everyone knows to give credit where credit is due. But sometimes that truism is more honored in the breach. (MS)NBC has been congratulating themselves over a purported scoop. The rest of the media accept their claim as fact. And yet...
It all began with Andrea Mitchell on Meet the Press. Her comments about the so-called cone of silence had two elements. The more speculative one suggested that McCain might have cheated by hearing the questions: "He was so well prepared". It was this claim that raised howls from the McCain camp. Even Howard Kurtz was not impressed:
I would not have raised it without evidence, or at least without someone from the Obama camp going on the record. Otherwise you're just giving them a free shot without his campaign having to back it up.But there was also a factual element to Mitchell's comment: McCain wasn't really in a cone of silence, because he was in a motorcade and arrived late for the forum. Defenders of Mitchell note that she was proven correct because even McCain's campaign admits he was in a motorcade and arrived late.
The New York Times wrote:
Members of the McCain campaign staff, who flew here Sunday from California, said Mr. McCain was in his motorcade on the way to the church as Mr. Obama was being interviewed...Rachel Sklar noted the Times article:
This corroborates Mitchell's report, which was "McCain may not have been in the cone of silence"...Never one to shy away from corporate brown-nosing, Keith Olbermann added his praise for Ms Mitchell's dogged investigative journalism. Note how he downplayed the veiled accusation of cheating (that McCain was "so well prepared"):
OLBERMANN: Regardless of whether McCain actually heard the questions that Obama got, do we know now that Andrea Mitchell and the Obama people were correct, that McCain was not in a cone of silence? Correct?... Andrea Mitchell's excellent reporting on the possibility that Sen. McCain violated the so-called cone of silence...Similarly, Sklar:
The issue, of course, isn't whether or not he cheated, but whether he could have cheated.This made it even easier for people like Olbermann to applaud Mitchell for breaking the news about the motorcade. Everyone accepted that it was her "scoop". Only this is the scoop that wasn't. Because it had been reported earlier. Much earlier. About 16 hours earlier:
Keith Olbermann boasted that Andrea Mitchell's belated, qualified ("may not have been") comment constituted "excellent reporting". So what superlatives would Mr Olbermann have to muster up should he ever give credit to the journalist who reported the facts a day earlier, five hours before the Saddleback forum even began?fox news am ko
