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Here's what I know:
* One week ago today (August 29th), Carol Shea-Porter held a town hall meeting in Manchester.
*On the same day, the NHGOP put out a video on their YouTube channel of a man at that town hall acting out and subsequently being removed by a two police officers. I encourage you to watch it.
* On August 30th, the following day, "Staff Reporter" at Republican operative Patrick Hyne's NowHampshire, a right-wing site that has the appearance of a legitimate "news" website, wrote the following:
Carol Shea-Porter... instructed armed security guards to remove a frustrated voter from her own town hall event in Manchester on Saturday.
In the appended video, Shea-Porter can be seen instructing security to remove a man for standing to ask a question without a ticket. Shea-Porter previously held a lottery to determine who could ask questions.
Watch the video again. Do you see her instructing the officer to remove the man?
* On August 31st and September 1st, millions of Americans watched FOX and Friends repeatedly cover this story. FOX used the same parameters as the NowHampshire description, and made no apparent attempt to contact the Congresswoman's office for her understanding of the incident.
* Also on September 1st, James Pindell reported that NowHampshire was featuring a number of YouTube clips of FOX and Friends repeating the claim that Shea-Porter had the man removed. As of the time of this writing, those clips are still up on the site.
* On September 3rd, the police officer who escorted the man out of the town hall issued a statement making it clear that it was his own decision to remove the man. Conservative columnnist and Union Leader editor Drew Cline, an eye witness to the event, confirmed that version of the events.
In my opinion, sites like Hynes' NowHampshire do equal parts damage to candidly partisan blogs and legitimate news outlets. And I think to a certain extent both New Hampshire based partisan blogs and objective news outlets understand what that site is all about and have been ignoring it. Which is what I have mostly done.
But in cases like this where the national media get involved, ignoring is not enough. And it is precisely because I am a partisan blogger on the left that I can't do the follow up. Our state media, in my opinion, needs to, or this kind of thing will go on repeating itself. Here are the questions I have:
* Is "Staff Reporter" Republican operative Patrick Hynes?
* What evidence did "Staff Reporter" use to determine that Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter was "instructing security to remove a man for standing to ask a question without a ticket"?
* Did "Staff Reporter" contact the Congresswoman's office for her take on this incident?
* Was it "Staff Reporter" who fed this "report" to FOX and Friends?
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