McCain Palin Campaign: New York Times - Bumiller stands by her story after the paper retracts

McCain Palin Campaign: New York Times - Bumiller stands by her story after the paper retracts

Posted by McCain Palin Campaign at 2:26 AM on 9/3/2008 by Michael Goldfarb

Bumiller Stands By Her Story...After Paper Retracts

Yesterday the New York Times ran a front-page story by Elisabeth Bumiller that was riddled with factual errors. Among them was the assertion by Bumiller that Governor Palin "was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party." There was no evidence offered to support this statement, and as this campaign pointed out, it is untrue.

Now the Times reports:

The information in the Times article was based on a statement issued Monday night by Lynette Clark, the party’s chairwoman, who said that Ms. Palin joined the party in 1994 and in 1996 changed her registration to Republican.

On Tuesday night, Ms. Clark said that her initial statement was incorrect and had been based on erroneous information provided by another member of the party whom she declined to identify.

Just to be clear, Bumiller asserted as fact what turns out to have been an "incorrect" statement by a single, unidentified source. Given that the story appeared on the front-page of this country's 'paper of record,' we might be forgiven for expecting a slightly more rigorous standard of reporting, yet Bumiller makes no apologies. Howard Kurtz reports in today's Washington Post:

Elisabeth Bumiller, the lead author of the Times report, said she is "completely confident about the story." As for the campaign's criticism, she said: "This is what they do. It's part of their operation."

She is completely confident in the word of a single source who has since retracted her claims? What kind of operation are the editors at the Times running?

20080902 NYT Bumiller stands story after paper retracts

http://www.johnmccain.com/mccainreport/Read.aspx?guid=faa9b0ce-06ad-4c26-bfbc-e7b083e2bc2d