Idiot Reporters defame profesion

[genlock]

From Lisa Demer in Anchorage --

A garbled conversation captured by chance on the voice mail of a staff member for U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller is being played up by the campaign as evidence of a local television station’s attempt to create anti-Miller stories, but the station says that’s absurd.

The brouhaha over the errant message, which included a reference to the possibility of child molesters appearing at a Miller rally, was getting national attention Sunday. Sarah Palin said on Fox News that “the CBS reporters, the affiliate in Alaska, conspired to make up stories about Joe Miller. We have the tape.”

The Miller campaign and KTVA Channel 11 agree on the basic narrative of what happened, but disagree strongly on what it means.

Someone with KTVA Channel 11 called Miller campaign spokesman Randy DeSoto Thursday afternoon to discuss the GOP candidate appearing on that evening’s newscast.

After getting DeSoto’s voice mail, the KTVA staffer failed to hang up the phone. DeSoto’s voice mail then captured the subsequent conversation among news staffers about story possibilities arising from the pro-Miller rally later that evening. Palin was the featured speaker at the rally.

On Saturday night, the Miller campaign released an audio copy of the recorded message, which is choppy and hard to follow, along with a transcript. DeSoto said Sunday the audio was not edited by the campaign. He said he believes it was KTVA assignment manager Nick McDermott calling because they had spoken before and McDermott’s number was captured along with the conversation. In addition, DeSoto said that McDermott later texted him “Damn iPhone . . . I left you a long message. I thought I hung up. Sorry.”

In a press release, the Miller campaign says the journalists “openly discuss creating, if not fabricating, two stories about Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Joe Miller.” The campaign contends one was about finding a child molester among Miller’s supporters.


Read more: http://community.adn.com/adn/node/154074#ixzz142WQj72J

[Bob Campbell]

Of course, if you actually read the story or paid attention to any of the coverage, you'd have seen that the reporters were neither idiots nor defamed anything. They merely discussed how they might cover any of a wide variety of possibilities at the upcoming appearance. Never did they mention or imply "making up" or "creating" any kind of story. If you're going to cover a story, you can bet your ass you're going to prepare for multiple possibilities. To not do so would be idiotic and would defame the profession.
The inability to hang up a cell phone is an entirely different matter.

[Lester]

Looks like he's bucking for a gig with the Journalisto.

[weaver]

Never did they mention or imply "making up" or "creating" any kind of story.

That's exactly what they did.

[AmpedNow]

The MSM lost what little credibility they had left when they turned a blind eye to all the question marks about Obama's past in 2008...

They could probably go work for Soros now in his campaign to ruin Glenn Beck.

[Bob Campbell]

The MSM lost what little credibility they had left when they turned a blind eye to all the question marks about Obama's past in 2008...

They could probably go work for Soros now in his campaign to ruin Glenn Beck.

Perhaps they "turned a blind eye" to said questions because they wanted to retain some credibility, as all those questions were fabricated bullshit from the right wing.