Posted by Jed Lewison on Mon Aug 18, 2008 at 2:18 PM Pacific

McCain Camp Defends Attack on NBC's Andrea Mitchell

McCain Deputy Communications Director Michael Goldfarb tries to explain why Rick Davis unloaded on a quote from NBC's Andrea Mitchell only hours after he approvingly cited it as part of an attack on Barack Obama. His defense:

I think my tone was neutral, but regardless, this campaign does not question the accuracy of Mitchell's reporting. We question whether it was appropriate to repeat this allegation unquestioningly as Mitchell did.

After all, Mitchell can accurately report that the Obama campaign is whining about their candidate's poor performance and yet still fail to uphold the basic standards of her profession. By repeating, uncritically, a completely unsubstantiated Obama campaign claim that John McCain somehow cheated in last night's forum, that's precisely what she did. And if Mitchell is simply in the business of parroting campaign spin, we'd be happy to share ours with her before next week's episode of Meet the Press.

Umm, where to begin. Let's start with the fact that the allegation that Mitchell reported is true and was in fact confirmed by Goldfarb himself.

Mitchell said:

The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because what they are putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well-prepared.

Point #1: As Goldfarb initially (and correctly) recognized, Mitchell's comment was supported her claim that "the Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to." It's hard to call that partisan bias.

Point #2: The allegation conveyed by Mitchell was that McCain "may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama." As Goldfarb and Davis have admitted, McCain was not in the cone of silence for the first half of the forum. There are any number of ways that he could have heard the questions, either audibly (satellite radio, cell phone, internet) or through textual means such as Blackberries.

The bottom-line: Goldfarb's explanation not only makes no sense, it digs the McCain campaign in even deeper.

McCain Camp Defends Attack on NBC's Andrea Mitchell

McCain Deputy Communications Director Michael Goldfarb tries to explain why Rick Davis unloaded on a quote from NBC's Andrea Mitchell only hours after he approvingly cited it as part of an attack on Barack Obama. His defense:

I think my tone was neutral, but regardless, this campaign does not question the accuracy of Mitchell's reporting. We question whether it was appropriate to repeat this allegation unquestioningly as Mitchell did.

After all, Mitchell can accurately report that the Obama campaign is whining about their candidate's poor performance and yet still fail to uphold the basic standards of her profession. By repeating, uncritically, a completely unsubstantiated Obama campaign claim that John McCain somehow cheated in last night's forum, that's precisely what she did. And if Mitchell is simply in the business of parroting campaign spin, we'd be happy to share ours with her before next week's episode of Meet the Press.

Umm, where to begin. Let's start with the fact that the allegation that Mitchell reported is true and was in fact confirmed by Goldfarb himself.

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