The Schiavo Memo Denouement Posted by: Jon Henke
on Thursday, April 07, 2005
Turns out the "Schiavo Memo" originated from the Office of Republican Senator Mel Martinez. Well, that's barely interesting.
You may recall I remained agnostic on the provenance of the Schiavo memo. I did so for a simple reason: despite the rancor it created, the memo simply was neither unique nor offensive. As I wrote...
Perhaps I've become obstructively cynical, but—unless the advocates of an issue actually disagree with the position they take, and take it anyway for political gain—I fail to see why political considerations have suddenly become something of which We Do Not Speak. Presumably, the Republicans legitimately believe that Terri Schiavo should not be disconnected from the feeding tube—that doing so would deprive her of her rights—so, it's hard to see why the recognition that this issue is, inclusively, good politics is so dastardly. [...] "I'm just unmoved by allegations of "politicizing" issues. It's not called "politics" for nothing."
So, with the news that a Republican staffer wrote a note about politics—(in Washington! The nerve!)—the players are weighing in to explain:
In fact, if the current AP account is correct, the amazingly inept "talking points memo," which got the number of the Senate bill wrong, misspelled Terri Schiavo's name, and contained a number of other typographical errors, did not come from "Republican officials" or "party leaders," but rather from an anonymous, unknown staffer. Senator Martinez himself—forget about members of his staff—is a freshman senator, in office for three months, not a "party leader" or "Republican officials." (The plural in the Post's original article is interesting.) Also, the reporting by ABC and the Post suggested that the memo was widely or universally distributed among Republican senators, while a survey reported by the Washington Tmes indicated that none of the 55 Republican senators had seen it. So, if the current AP story is correct, it confirms that ABC and the Post misreported the story—in the Post's case, in an article that was picked up by dozens of other newspapers off the paper's wire service.
Where has Tom Harkin been for the last two and a half weeks? [...] The whole point of the story, as initially reported, was that the document was an official "GOP memo," created by the party's leadership and broadly circulated to the party's Senators. If Harkin had told what he knew promptly, that story never would have been written, or would have been promptly spiked.
Michelle Malkin provides a rundown of who reached too far, and who remained skeptical...
After John Hinderaker at Power Line first started asking necessary questions about the reporting on the memo, many on the Right jumped to conclusions that the memo was "fake" or a "dirty trick." I concur that those who made such claims should issue clear retractions and corrections. And I urge those bloggers and pundits to do so.
But contrary to what the left-wing gloaters who have not bothered to follow the story until last night are writing, I have never made such claims...
Plenty of egg for the right, the WaPo, and for the office of Senator Martinez. But the mystery of the Memo's provenance, and the subsequent fuss, obscures the more fundamental point that the memo was just not that notable, and it certainly was not out of line with history.
For more on that, including a trip back down the lane of "great political issues" in recent history, read this.
My question is, what will the screeching bomb-throwers at Powerline do about this? They've been pushing the "fame memo" meme for weeks. They repeatedly stated matter-of-factly that the memo was a "fake," and implied over and over again that it was a Democrat dirty trick. If a media figure had made the same mistake, the Powerline mob would be calling for a resignation. It'd be nice if Powerline provided an apology and retraction.
Don't hold your breath.
Yes, when it comes to corrections, I think we've already discovered that Powerline is little better than the mainstream media they criticize. And quite a bit less pleasant.
Powerline has nothing to correct or explain. They make no attempt to bury the story, giving it prominent play.
You’ll also notice that even though the GOP idiot did create the memo, that doesn’t excuse the shoddy reporting that went on in the story (check out Kurtz’s take on that)
even though the GOP idiot did create the memo, that doesn’t excuse the shoddy reporting that went on in the story
I agree with that. But...
Powerline has nothing to correct or explain
They—or some of them—claimed it was a fake, and were in the process of excoriating the media for it. Questioning the provenance is one thing, but claiming its a fake, or that you believe it to be such, without any proof is quite another.
Mostly, I’m just tired of the blogosphere triumphalism, as if bloggers are somehow less prone to bias, too-quick judgements or mistakes than is the media. Or that we are as quick and upfront with our corrections.
And I don’t see Power Line balking at the literally incredibel claim by Martinez that he’d never seen the thing or known that it had originated from his office. Come on, he was carrying it in his pocket, and handed it to Sen. Harkin (no doubt by mistake.) Martinez, until it became infeasible to do so, repeatedly told the media that he had no idea where the memo came from and that he had never laid eyes it until it became a media issue.
Would Power Line believe this if it were Barbara Boxer claiming she handed a memo to a GOP senator from her pocket— a memo drafted by a senior Boxer staffer and legal counsel— but she herself knew nothing about it and had never read it? To ask the question is to answer it.
I am incredulous about Martinez’s claim as well. However, that still doesn’t outweigh the malfeasance on the part of ABC News and the WaPo which initially issued stories with serious falsehoods and their lame attempts to deny they had said what they in fact had originally said. It wasn’t a memo drafted by "Republican officials" or the "Republican leadership" and several weeks later, the only Senator that we know was it was Tom Harkin.
Also, everyone should check out Michelle Malkin’s post linked to in Jon’s post. She has posted the email sent to her by Mike Allen and he is clearly trying to lure her into accusing Democrats of authoring the memo when he already knows that it came from the Martinez office and that they are about to admit it publicly. I wish journalists would just report the news instead of trying to entrap people and, thereby, create the news.
Jon is right that this isn’t particulary newsworthy. Isn’t it obvious that Democrats are going to suspect base motives on the part of the GOP? The only people this story appealed to were Democrats who already believed the GOP was playing politics. By the way, if Barbara Boxer had been busted with a similar Demo. memo, the story wouldn’t be any more newsworth. However, I would find a claim that she didn’t know what was in the memo to be much more believable because she has the brain activity of a small bowl of jello.
I completely agree that WaPo and ABC demonstrated shoddy and biased reporting about the extent of the distribution of the memo. However, I disagree that it was not newsworthy. It is uncommon for this sort of strategy memo about a hugely controversial matter to be leaked, and when it is, and when it is known to come from a sitting U.S. Senator’s office, I think that is quite newsworthy.
I’m not inclined to believe that no other GOP Congressperson and/or their staff did not hold entirely similar views; we only have evidence of one such example, however, one that happened to be leaked due to a Senator’s stupidity in giving it to a Democrat. And who then lied about whether he had seen it, and from whence it came.
(I voted for Bush, but what the GOP did vis-a-vis the Schiavo thing made me ill.)
