Filed under: Journalism, John McCain, Radar, John Vincent (Vin) Weber
Radar magazine has rushed another story without gathering all the facts. And, in turn, it has been forced to issue an embarrassing retraction. On Monday, the publication haphazardly published the following information online:
After Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman denied the affair to the Times, the newspaper reported last night that Mr. McCain had acknowledged to two of his associates in 2000 that he had been “behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman.”
Sources told Radar that one of these associates was John Vincent (Vin) Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota who was an advisor to McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000. In 2007, Weber became Policy Chairman for the Romney for President Exploratory Committee.
Weber did not immediately respond to a message left with the receptionist at Clark & Weinstock in Washington this morning, where Weber is a partner. The message said Radar would report that Weber was one of the sources of the story in the New York Times. The receptionist said Weber was in a meeting and could not come to the telephone.
Problem is, if Radar would have waited to talk to Weber, he would have told them a much different story than that of their alleged sources. In a subsequent update, the magazine has been forced to add this retraction, albeit at the bottom of the story:
At 12:51 PM, , after this story was posted, Weber called Radar with this statement: “Absolutely, positively completely not true in any form.”
Big Head DC has long said that Radar is often much too quick to rush to judgments based on lacking evidence. This instance is just the most recent embarrassing case.
