PPH Lends A Hand

When we first encountered PPH reporter Jonathan Kaplan in December, he was passing on Republican talking points as if they were facts. A more recent effort was more encouraging

But now he appears to be back to his old tricks.

In yesterday's piece, on Sen. Collins' Moveon.org-related attack on Rep. Allen, Kaplan makes a number of dubious assertions.

First: "Allen raised $365,000 from MoveOn.org." This is both false and misleading.

The strange thing is, Kaplan seems to know this: Lower down in the article, he clarifies, making it clear he understands that the money wasn't "from" Moveon.org, and that the contributions instead came from individual citizens--who weren't necessarily even Moveon.org members.

So why, in the article's third paragraph, does he parrot the Collins camp's factually-challenged spin that Allen received a giant cash infusion directly from Moveon?

Second: "Allen has called for an immediate and safe withdrawal of troops. Collins has called on President Bush to change the mission of U.S. troops, but she has stopped short of demanding a complete withdrawal." Again, incomplete and misleading.

Allen has called for beginning a withdrawal immediately. But Kaplan's construction leaves open the interpretation that Allen wants all troops out within a week.

And while Kaplan is right that Collins has called for a change of mission, she hasn't demanded any sort of withdrawal, let alone a complete one: She has never voted for a plan which would force Bush's hand in Iraq. And in fact, while she nominally "opposed" the surge, I haven't heard any complaints from her about our current troop strength in Iraq.

In short, there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that Collins has a problem with keeping 100,000 American troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future. But Kaplan's characterization leaves the opposite impression.

So again, we have two more sets of assertions which play into Collins' hands--glossing over her almost total deference to Bush while describing Allen's view in a way that makes him sound at least potentially reckless.

Credit Kaplan for observing that Moveon, "has become an organization despised by conservatives because of its ability to quickly organize and raise money on behalf of Democratic causes and candidates" and that, "this is not the first time Collins has tried to use MoveOn.org to gain political advantage."

But these useful bits of context do not excuse the article's misrepresentations.