The AP Did Not Feel It Necessary to Correct This Paragraph (So I Will Help You Try)
This is a post about media coverage of The Second District GOP Primary, and not the politics of the 2nd District GOP race itself.
Here’s the story:
“Congresswoman Questions Legality of Opponent’s Radio Ad”
Here’s the paragraph in question:
In the 30-second ad, an announcer says that as a congressman from 1981 to 1993, McEwen “helped write a reform agenda that led to the Contract with America.” But because the document was unveiled several months after McEwen left office, Freeman said he couldn’t claim credit.
Note that the closest document to “the document” in the final sentence is the “Contract with America” — so that must be “the document” Hammer is referring to.
A direct link to the radio ad is at the top of the home page of the BobMcEwenForCongress.com web site.
The Contract with America, according to the second paragraph at this Wikipedia entry and several others I could cite, was released six weeks before the (November 8, 1994) election. That would be on or about September 27, 1994.
Bob McEwen left Congress in January 1993.
Perhaps Mr. Freeman said that the Contract with America was released a few months after Mr. McEwen left office, but Mr. Hammer and the AP, an allegedly professional organization with a supposedly detailed knowledge and institutional memory of recent American history, should have known that and corrected it.
Perhaps Mr. Freeman didn’t say that, and Mr. Hammer incorrectly identified the length of time involved on his own. Editors above him should have caught and corrected the error.
Perhaps Mr. Hammer meant to say the the “reform agenda” Mr. McEwen’s radio ad refers to was released several months after Mr. McEwen left office (though it seems unlikely that any reform agenda would have been released in the Spring or Summer of 1993, given that the GOP was in a distinct minority in both houses of Congress; I could not find any evidence of a “reform agenda being released by the GOP in Spring or Summer of 1993, but if I’m wrong, e-mail me and give me a link). If that’s what Mr. Hammer meant, the grammar is botched, and again his editors should have caught and corrected it.
No matter — The fact is that the Contract with America was released roughly twenty months after Bob McEwen left office. How long the Contract with America was released after any “reform agenda” Bob McEwen may have been involved with was released is not stated.
So….. Readers can edit the AP’s paragraph in their own minds now that they have the facts.
By the way, I spoke to the AP Columbus Bureau about the story last night and followed up this afternoon. Mr. Hammer and his editor saw no need to revise the story. They are (obviously, and objectively) wrong.
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UPDATE: More AP slop — the announcer never says “1981 to 1993″ as a lead-in to “helped write a reform agenda …..” text in the actual radio ad. Hammer’s sentence almost makes it seem as if that’s all Mr. McEwen accomplished in his 12 years in Congress, or alternatively that he spent all 12 years on just that one project. Both assertions are obviously absurd, and describe something the ad’s announcer never said. But that’s how Mr. Hammer wrote it.
