Novak's Hillary-Obama "Scandal" Story Turns Out To Be A Bust. So Should We Stop Listening To Him Now?
December 12, 2007 -- 4:24 PM EST // //
You may recall that last month, Robert Novak published a much-talked-about column reporting that the Hillary campaign was sitting on "scandalous" information about Barack Obama.
The sourcing of this was laughably thin -- it said that unnamed "agents of Hillary" were said to be telling this to unnamed "Democrats." Nonetheless, the political media went absolutely rip-roaring mad over the story, speculating for days about it and laboring with Talmudic intensity to divine its hidden meaning for Hillary, Obama, and the campaign in general.
Well -- surprise, surpise -- we now learn that there was really nothing to the Novak column at all. Ben Smith reports that tomorrow Novak will reveal the truth about this big revelation Hillary was supposedly sitting on:
Two sources tell me his column, which runs tomorrow, will report that the "scandalous information" in question arrived in the form of the attack on Obama's PAC as a "slush fund" for its contributions to early-state politicians.No indeed. This major "scandal" that Hillary was sitting on concerned Obama's PAC, it turns out. As Ben says, this engendered a couple of tough pieces, but it's still fairly routine oppo research -- and is a very far cry indeed from the sort of explosive campaign-rocking scandal that Novak implied Hillary was sitting on.This was a fairly sharp criticism of Obama's interpretation of election law, and was the subject of a couple pretty harsh Washington Post pieces. But I don't think many of Novak's reader had election law in mind.
One thing that endlessly puzzles this blog is the unwillingness of so many commentators and media figures to learn from it when they get burned by bogus stories. It doesn't matter if Drudge's latest "siren" exclusive has proven to be false yet again -- the next time the siren goes up, media people will still say to each other, "have you seen Drudge"?
Newsflash: Novak was full of sh-t. So I propose we learn something from this experience. Any chance we can all agree not to waste our time talking about it the next time Novak says something like this?
Don't answer that.
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