Posted on 03/22/2007 9:17:47 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK - A reporter for the new Politico Web site apologized for reporting that John Edwards was suspending his campaign for president more than an hour before Edwards said Thursday he was staying in the race.
The incorrect report rocketed through the media before Edwards held his news conference announcing the recurrence of his wife's cancer. Some outlets used Politico's information; others steered clear.
Ben Smith, a former New York Daily News reporter, posted the report on his Politico Web log at 11:06 a.m. EDT. Quoting but not identifying "an Edwards friend" as his source, Smith reported that Edwards was suspending his campaign and may drop out completely because of Elizabeth Edwards' cancer.
"There was never any discussion of suspending the campaign," Edwards adviser Jennifer Palmieri said. She said the Edwardses invited about half a dozen aides to their home to discuss how best to tell the public about her diagnosis and their decision to stay in the race.
Smith, in a later post titled "Getting it Wrong," explained how he had trusted a reliable source he had known for years. But he "unwisely" wrote it without getting a second source, he said.
"When the campaign pushed back harder than I'd expected, I added that information to the original item, but that doesn't undo the damage," Smith wrote. "My apologies to our readers for passing on bad information."
The Politico, a Web site with a companion free tabloid distributed in Washington, began in January with many respected political journalists. It was founded by John Harris and Jim VandeHei, longtime Washington Post journalists.
With news organizations waiting for a news conference that it had known about for more than 12 hours without a substantive leak ahead of time, Smith's report proved too hard for many to resist.
CNN cited the Politico report several times before Edwards' news conference, but pulled back when correspondent Candy Crowley said Edwards staffers were casting doubt on it.
While MSNBC did not cite the report on television, the Web site MSNBC.com ran the information as a banner headline. MSNBC.com later apologized, saying it had relied on Politico "and a source who spoke to NBC."
CBS News, which has a partnership agreement with Politico, posted the report on the CBS Web site without doing its own reporting, and later corrected it, a spokeswoman said.
NBC News anchor Brian Williams delivered his own correction after the network briefly interrupted regular programming for the Edwards news conference.
"When we came on for this special report, we delivered two headlines to you. Number one, that Mrs. Edwards' cancer had returned," he said. "Sadly, that headline turned out to be correct. The second headline was that John Edwards was ending or suspending his campaign for president, and as we just heard from the former senator, he said this campaign goes on. So that part of this story, at least for now, is incorrect."
ABC News did not cite Politico, either on the air or Web, because its own sources were leading the network in the other direction, said Jon Banner, executive producer of "World News."
"The pressure is on to get these things right, especially when it concerns someone's health," he said. "There's some sensitivity to that."
Fox News Channel and The Associated Press also did not repeat the Politico report, relying on their own reporters.
Harris, Smith's editor at Politico, was not immediately available for comment. But he told Smith in an e-mail that his reporting was worth sharing with readers, but only with the caution that the information was fragmentary.
"We should not have made a flat, predictive assertion about what Edwards was going to do," Harris wrote. "The lesson, which we both know but re-learned, was the importance of precision."
The incident illustrates the danger faced by Politico, a Web site that tries to combine the gossipy aspects of a Web log with the authoritativeness of journalists, said Tom Rosenstiel, a former political reporter and director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism.
"It doesn't have a lot of track record and it's still making first impressions," Rosenstiel said. "This not a good first impression."
___
Associated Press reporters Jake Coyle in New York and Nedra Pickler in Washington contributed to this report.
Democratic Presidential hopeful John Edwards talks about his wife Elizabeth's recurrence of cancer as she listens during a news conference in Chapel Hill, N.C., Thursday, March 22, 2007. Edwards will continue his campaign for the presidency. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)
I wish her and the family well.
Liz too
I saw the initial post last night and I thought the sourcing of two Edwards friends saying the "news [of Elizabeth's condition] was bad" sounded odd.
Fox News Channel.........did not repeat the Politico report, relying on their own reporters.
It's nice to see the others falling over themselves trying to be so so sorry for implementing their usual M.O. upon one of their own, LOL.
Smith, in a later post titled "Getting it Wrong," explained how he had trusted a reliable source he had known for years...
...Hillary?
Whats up with Politico.com?
I never heard of them before 2 weeks ago, suddenly Hugh Hewitt and Rush Limbuagh among others are citing them as THE source, and then they step in it on the opening month of their populatity
IMO, Edwards should have done what a selfless loving husband with young children would do, quit the race and be there for his wife every step of the way, regardless of whether or not she's telling him not to quit. Running for president isn't your every day run of the mill job, where you go to the office, and at the end of the day you come home. Frankly, I think he's been extremely selfish to stay in the race at a time when his wife will need him to be there, not miles away attending fundraisers and campaigning, etc.
Agree completely. I really don't get why the Presidency is more important than being with your wife in the last years of her life. Especially with such young children. Some people have no character. Maybe they're both still in denial about her survival but most doctors would tell you that she isn't long for this world. A positive outlook helps but, still, prayers for Elizabeth and her children. I don't think prayers would help the Breck Boy.
Only person that should be apologizng is Edwards.
He held a noontime conference and caused all of this speculation himself by refusing to talk before the conference. All he had to do was make a little posting on his website a few days ago and release the news that way and he would have saved himself the big mess. But Edwards wanted the big mess, he wanted all the publicity he could get out of it, he milked this for as much as he could and got all the cable TV channels to give him hours worth of coverage today, he even made sure to start the conference 20 minutes late so the TV stations would be stuck waiting for him and thus giving him more time.
This is a man that spent his career suing doctors and hospitals, that used junk science in the courtroom to bilk tons of money out of doctors and hospitals and he used that money to build himself the largest mansion in his county. Many doctors were put out of practice due to him and many patients had to pay higher insurance due to Edwards and other lawyers like him. I don't have any sympathy for him or for any member of his family getting cancer; I think it is a higher power acting and striking his family with a dead son and an obese wife full of cancer who now has to rely on doctors to stay alive, after years of watching her hubby commit legalized extortion against doctors. You can't go through life and walk all over people and extort money from people and think you won't pay any ramifications on this Earth, there is a higher power at work, and the cancer his wife keeps getting is a direct punishment for how he used the healthcare system as his own ATM machine for years. What goes around comes around, I bet the doctors he put out of practice aren't losing a minute of sleep over hearing about his whale of a wife getting more cancer.
""The pressure is on to get these things right, especially when it concerns someone's health," he said. "There's some sensitivity to that."
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Unless you are a VRWC member - such as Rush's health probelems...
Apparently, it started up at the end of January by two guys from the Washington Post, one their former White House reporter, and the other an editor.
It seems strange for Hewitt and Limbaugh to sing their praises now when they probably blasted them as drive-by when they were with the WaPo.
-PJ
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