As RJ Eskow noted in his blog today on the HuffPost, there was a very disingenous blog post today in the NYT's political blog The Caucus.
Patrick Healy, the Caucus' blogger, quoted a "fundraising analyst" who said,
"Clinton’s blow-away third quarter fundraising total is likely to have, among other things, a profound psychological effect on voters," Mr. Panagopoulos said. "It will give the impression of growing Clinton strength — both in terms of dollars and number of donors."
"Obama also raised impressive sums," he added, "but he may be seen as languishing relative to previous quarters. Obama’s lackluster third quarter intake, relative to previous quarters, reflects, at least in part, waning enthusiasm for his candidacy and diminishing prospects for an Obama victory."
More below
Eskow rightly notes:
Wow. Pretty damning indictment of Obama's prospects, wouldn't you say? But here's something Patrick Healy, the author of the post, fails to inform his readership. From Mr. Panagopoulos' bio page on his website:
Dr. Panagopoulos was selected by the American Political Science Association as a Congressional Fellow during 2004-2005, and he served in the office of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY).
That should have been worthy of at least a mention, don't you think? After all, Mr. Panagopoulos describes Obama's campaign as "lackluster," "languishing," and suffering from "waning enthusiasm" and "diminishing prospects."
Eskow later updated his blog with the following:
UPDATE: Mr. Healy's blog entry was altered some time after we posted this. This paragraph was inserted between the "Clinton's blowin' 'em away" quotes and the "Obama's lackluster" quotes:
Mr. Panagopoulos worked in Mrs. Clinton's Senate office in 2004-5 as a congressional fellow of the American Political Science Association; he said he is not supporting or advising her or any other candidate in the 2008 race.
He then notes:
It's common practice when blogging to note such changes and corrections, to avoid the appearance that you're trying to mislead your readers. The post as originally written would not have noted this analyst's potential conflict of interest.
And we still don't know how Mr. Healy found him in the first place. As Atrios would say, "time to convene a blogger ethics panel."
There is at this moment a recommended diary that posted the same two original paragraphs in the Caucus post, but snipped out the later rather revealing conflict of interest paragraph of the so-called fundraising analyst who was quoted.
When I called him out on it, here
to the diarist's credit, he corrected the quote to show the relevant passage.
But, like in the NYT's blog, he did not note that he had updated his post to make a correction.
I'll just reiterate here was Kasow noted above:
It's common practice when blogging to note such changes and corrections, to avoid the appearance that you're trying to mislead your readers. The post as originally written would not have noted this analyst's potential conflict of interest.
I have never done this type of diary before... In fact, I rarely posts diaries anymore. But I really felt this type of disingenous posting, both at the NYT's blog and here, needed to be highlighted.