Thanks Deadspin!
Botched takedown of Cory Gardner helps Cory Gardner.
Deadspin, which is part of Gawker Media, ran a story yesterday that Cory Garnder, the Republican running for Senate in Colorado who is ahead in the polls, had faked his high school football career.
It was game over according to the cheerleading section on Twitter.
Wow. RT @AdamWeinstein: Ah ha ha ha ha @Deadspin just killed the GOP's Senate hopes in Colorado ha ha ha ha http://t.co/0PKv72Wae0
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) October 15, 2014
As they were high-fiving each other and ordering extra beers for the post-election celebration, a funny thing happened. The story turned out to be false.
I never thought my unheralded sports career would make it onto @Deadspin pic.twitter.com/llKf62Z7UL #copolitics
— Cory Gardner (@CoryGardner) October 15, 2014
Hoping @johnelway notices my “good form” if he needs another left bench this weekend. #copolitics #cosen pic.twitter.com/nM3qeYolZN
— Cory Gardner (@CoryGardner) October 15, 2014
After muddling the apology, equivocating, and mostly hoping beyond hope that maybe the story could be salvaged, Deadspin’s Editor did a very open apology (though still kinda blaming their original source), How Deadspin Fucked Up The Cory Gardner Story:
On Wednesday, Deadspin published a story questioning the football bona fides of U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, a Republican who’s running for the Colorado Senate seat currently occupied by Democrat Mark Udall. We fucked up. After the story was published, the main source we’d relied on reversed himself on a key point, and the central thrust of the report turns out to have been wrong. For that we’re sorry and embarrassed….
But whatever the case, the most damning implication of our story, that Gardner didn’t actually play high school ball, is wrong. That’s shitty of us. As serial collectors of media fuck-ups, we add this self-portrait to the gallery. For more thorough coverage, you can read Erik Wemple over at the Post. As I told Wemple—and I sincerely meant it—given that our main source went and unsaid everything he’d said 24 hours earlier, the only thing for us to do now is to eat shit.
The damage goes beyond Deadspin.
It was damaging to the Democratic effort against Gardner.
You don’t get many October Surprises, and this one falling flat will hurt all efforts against Gardner.
Brad Woodhouse, a leading Democratic operative now with American Bridge, was not happy.
Thanks for nothing, @Deadspin
— Brad Woodhouse (@woodhouseb) October 16, 2014
Which made T. Becket Adams of the D.C. Examiner happy:
Your tears are delicious. RT @woodhouseb: Thanks for nothing, @Deadspin pic.twitter.com/kStnDxD2aj
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) October 16, 2014
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Comments
One source and they ran with it … don’t journalists learn something about fact checking, confirming sources?
Did they even call the school? Sheesh …
oh … he called the school library and someone checked one yearbook. Still pitiful.
Don’t you know to be a journalister scribler in Today’s Obama Media, you have to make up 100% of your fake facts???
LOL
Fake but accurate–isn’t that what Dan Rather taught us?
Professory Jacobson using “South Park?” LOL LOVE IT!
What is most noteworthy is the appalling vulgarity of DeadSpin’s language; it, like their politics, is straight out of the gutter.
I’ll give Deadspin credit for an actual apology with only a tiny little “but” at the end. Doesn’t that count for something?
I so agree with that Juba! I am so sick of the “f” word. It’s past its value as a shock word, it’s just a dumb word that everyone uses now to pretend they’re edgy. Newsflash! It’s not edgy if everyone is doing it. What would be edgy is some who speaks like Wm. F. Buckley!
David Corn
CORN.
Perfect name for a habitual loser.
Corn is himself a serial fabulist.
“We f***ed up – we trusted our source!”
Hey, it’s gotta work better than the truth! (With all due respectful credits to Animal House)
they wanted to believe so badly they “misread” his comments and teh email that “didn’t go through”. Kinda like “my hard drive crashed but I’ll check it after the election”
Looks like ex-coach Chuck Pfalmer’s recollections are pfew and pfar between at this point.
Hmmmm…..I wonder if the “source” pulled a fast one on the libtards.
Let’s see… if you are Democrat and lie about your military career, Vietnam and all, as did Dicky Blumenthal, it’s no big deal and you get elected to the Senate from Connecticut.
But if you’re a Republican and perhaps, maybe, might have, possibly prevaricated about your almost non-existent high school football career, you are somehow on par with a serial killer and not fit to be a Senator.
Have Democrats actually sank that low? That’s whale sh!t on the floor of the Mariana’s Trench Challenger Deep, low. Any lower, and they’d pop out in China somewhere (and get to solicit Clinton’s old donors).
Hey look at how far back they were willing to go to smear Mitt Romney. I wasn’t a Romney supporter at all, but going back to high school for some stupid prank and making it into a national news story was a tad much. As was their willingness to libel him about that rock on the ranchers farm. And trumpeting the story about the dog on the roof. All the while protecting The One.
Yeah, targeting shit about a high school football career definitely seems in their wheelhouse.
The “rock” was on a deer (hunting) lease where Rick Perry used to hunt.
But you are absolutely right. Anything a Republican candidate did, all the way back to their moment of conception, is fair game. Anything a DemocRAT does and is brought to light is just “dirty politics”.
Well, you have to give them credit for going back and setting the record straight after they screwed up.
Even the Times doesn’t do that.
Story, page 1, above the fold, 18-point type. Retraction, page 23, below the farm report, 8-point type. It’s the story that gets remembered, not the retraction.
And yes, Trooper, the Dems have sunk that low – a long time ago.
Progressive liberal democrats have been makin’ up stuff for as long as I can remember so why change now?
Democrats as usual…
Not progressive liberal, progressive fascist.
Deadspin = DUDspin