FactCheck: Talent For Deception (MO Senate!).

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Talent For Deception
Missouri Sen. Talent's attacks share a simple, misleading strategy: false attribution

Summary

In four separate TV spots Republican Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri falsely attributes several unflattering quotes about his opponent to the Kansas City Star. Our examination reveals that the quotes actually come from rival Claire McCaskill's political opponents and critics, not from the Star's reporters or editors.

In another case, where a Talent ad uses a phrase that actually did come from a newspaper, it is out of context and misleading. The negative remark was in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial that was endorsing McCaskill for election.

Political campaigns often quote newspaper stories and editorials because voters tend to give them greater weight than the self-interested statements of office seekers. There's nothing misleading about that if the quotes are accurate, in context and properly attributed. But these Talent ads deceive voters by misappropriating the newspapers' credibility.



"Exaggerating" state audits . This quote is used five times in the four ads. Only once is the date given: July 17, 2004. The article is a profile of McCaskill, and contains the sentence: "Critics accuse McCaskill of sometimes exaggerating her audit results." The ad falsely implies that the words are the newspaper's judgment of McCaskill, rather than unnamed "critics." The article goes on to quote one of those critics, her political opponent Maxwell.

More:
http://factcheck.org/article454.html#

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1. Talent is challenged on accuracy of ads

snip

“We are formally requesting that the Talent campaign pull all ads that cite The Kansas City Star as the source for material that is not properly attributed,” Editorial Page Editor Miriam Pepper said in an e-mail to the Talent campaign. “The ads imply that these are statements from editorials or reporters. They are not.”

snip

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/15832631.htm

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2. Everyone is blasting him for this.

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3. Ain't it cool?

And then, there's this:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2006/10/no-one-ever-said-abramoff-was-stupid.html

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4. kick