Democracy Has Prevailed.

March 1, 2013

Jack Kelly UPDATE!!

Hey, remember this blog post?

It's the blog post where I quote Jack as writing this:
At the time they met with President Barack Obama on 9/11/2012, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, knew it was terrorists who were attacking our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Mr. Panetta testified Feb. 7.

Their pre-scheduled meeting in the Oval Office took place about 90 minutes after the attack began. The president "left it up to them" whether to respond, Mr. Panetta told the Senate Intelligence Committee. The fighting would last for six hours more, but neither he nor Gen. Dempsey heard from the president again that night, Mr. Panetta said.
And I wrote:
Note the word "whether" after the quotation. And note the quotation for that matter. Now you'd think that in a newspaper (even if it is only an "opinion" column found in that newspaper) when a Secretary of Defense is quoted the writer gets the quotation right - or at least it's close enough not to be misleading.

By phrasing it the way he does, Jack leaves his audience with the impression that the President left the decision to respond up to Panetta and Gen. Dempsey. This is false.
Well guess what?

[This is where you'd say, "What?"]

Guess what I found at the P-G this evening?

[This is where you'd say "What?" again, only slightly annoyed.]

Take a guess what I found?  GUESS!

[This is where you'd say, "If you don't tell me right now, I'm gonna break your arm!"]

Ok, ok - Sheesh!  Might wanna lay off the espresso, (or maybe try some decaf).  Anyway, here's what I found at the Post-Gazette this evening:
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the Senate Intelligence Committee that President Obama had "directed both myself and [Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] to do everything we needed to do to try to protect lives there" when told of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. A Jack Kelly column published Sunday said Mr. Panetta had testified that the president had "left it up to them" whether to respond.
You're welcome.

Now if I can only get them to do this BEFORE Jack's columns are published.

2 comments:

Maria Lupinacci said...

HA! Great catch!

spork_incident said...

Alas, I won't be impressed with the P-G unless tomorrow's Kelly Kolumn has that revision at the top. Otherwise, few are going to know about it.

I'm not holding out much hope.


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