MSM Reporters Misreport Yet Another Fred Thompson Campaign Stop (UPDATE: Thompson Responds)

Twice in ten days someone standing in the same room who makes pretty good money to pay attention to what someone says and then report it accurately has gotten a story on Fred Thompson completely wrong. First it was The Politico’s Roger “Editors? What Editors?” Simon who apparently fell asleep during a Thompson visit to an Iowa fire house. Now it’s the USA Today’s Bill Theobald who Dowdified his way through a question and answer session.

I don’t ask a lot from journalists except that they demonstrate the same abilities as a trained parrot or a ten dollar tape recorder. I don’t need to them to write scintillating prose. I just need them to go to an event, take some notes, then accurately recount to me what happened.

It’s a shame that we can’t get that. Thank goodness for bloggers who at least get held accountable for their mistakes when we make them.

UPDATE: CNN got it wrong, too. What’s so difficult about being accurate? It’s not like what Thompson said was difficult to understand. He was speaking nice plain English and everything.

UPDATE 2: Fred Thompson, in a post on RedState, responds to the article. Before I get to that, I owe a correction, too.

the reporter in error wasn’t Bill Theobald. It was Jill Lawrence, who was reporting on Theobald’s correct report. He wrote to correct her completely wrong take on things. See the update to Bob Krumm’s post for the details.

Now, back to Thompson. Seems there is some bad blood between Thompson’s campaign and Lawrence. Says Fred:

Today I had this story written about me regarding what I said at a Town Hall event in Burlington, Iowa by a reporter who wasn’t even at the event. Incidentally, I declined to be interviewed by this particular reporter yesterday for reasons which will soon be apparent.

He provides a transcript of his complete answer to the question from the audience and it’s worth a full read. It will be unlike anything you’ve seen from any other candidate in this election.