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Bridging Schizophrenia

Today, in a Wall Street Journal piece on Hillary Clinton’s appearance in Florida on behalf of Obama, Christopher Cooper and Amy Chozick drop these grafs on...
September 9, 2008

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Today, in a Wall Street Journal piece on Hillary Clinton’s appearance in Florida on behalf of Obama, Christopher Cooper and Amy Chozick drop these grafs on a new McCain ad:

On Monday, the McCain campaign unveiled a television advertisement portraying Gov. Palin as a crusader against government waste. The ad showcased her opposition to the so-called Bridge to Nowhere, an expensive federal road project that proposed to link a small Alaskan village to the mainland.

Some media reports say Gov. Palin was an early supporter of the project and opposed the bridge when it became expedient to do so.

“Some media reports”? It’s a phrase that puts the messy matter of actually judging the truth in someone else’s hands.

And it’s a weird phrase to choose when your very own paper, on the very same day, ran 700 excellent words explaining that Palin supported the project until it became a national laughingstock. The headline? “Record Contradicts Palin’s ‘Bridge’ Claims.”

Another oddity: Besides the two bylined authors, who’s named as having contributed reporting to the bridge-fact check story? Amy Chozick, one of the authors on the “some media report” story.

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Clint Hendler is the managing editor of Mother Jones, and a former deputy editor of CJR.