Rachel Maddow Draws Fire From GOP Rep. For Reporting On 'The Family' (VIDEO)
digg Huffpost - Rachel Maddow Draws
Fire From GOP Rep. For Reporting On 'The Family' (VIDEO)
First Posted: 07-14-09 12:07 PM | Updated:
07-14-09 02:05 PM
Apparently, "The Rachel Maddow Show" has drawn fire from the office of Congressman
Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) over a segment aired last week on The Family, an organization that's best known for organizing the National
Prayer Breakfast but becoming better known for "C Street." C Street is a house where several members of Congress reside, and
through which Mark Sanford and John Ensign are receiving some sort of undefined "counseling" for their extramarital affairs.
Apparently, the fooferaw between Wamp, who lives at "C Street," and Maddow stems from a segment she did last Friday, in
which she quoted a Knoxville News Sentinel article titled, "Wamp, housemates hurt by links to scandals." I'll quote the entire
section. The bolded portion is what Maddow read on the air last Friday:
"These are trying times, and, obviously, with Sen. Ensign and Gov. Sanford, everybody is disappointed," Wamp said. "There
is no doubt about that."
Ensign, of Nevada, and Sanford were both rising stars in the Republican Party, and Wamp said their transgressions have
hurt the GOP and the conservative movement.
"There's no question that the blows to the party and the conservative movement are painful," he said. "But that just goes
to show that no group of people is exempt from these kinds of problems."
Beyond that, Wamp declines to offer any insight into how his housemates are grappling with the scandal. The C Street residents
have all agreed they won't talk about their private living arrangements, Wamp said, and he intends to honor that pact.
"I hate it that John Ensign lives in the house and this happened because it opens up all of these kinds of questions,"
Wamp said. But, he said, "I'm not going to be the guy who goes out and talks."
Since then, Wamp's office has complained to MSNBC, in a note that read: "This statement made by Ms. Maddow Friday night
is false: 'Today he told the Knoxville News Sentinel that the members of Congress who live there are sworn to secrecy.' Congressman
Wamp never said people who live or meet at C Street are sworn to secrecy because that is in no way true."
Maddow, last night, stood by her reporting, saying: "The on-the-record quotation from Mr. Wamp was that C Street residents
have all agreed they won't talk about their private living arrangements. The News Sentinel characterized the agreement as
a "pact." We called the News Sentinel today to see if they got that wrong, to see if Mr. Wamp's office had at least also called
them to say the quote was wrong -- to demand a retraction or correction. They said they haven't heard from him."
If there is a dime's worth of difference to split here, it lies with what was quoted on the record and what the newspaper
characterized from the statements given by Wamp. It can be fairly said that Wamp never said, on the record, that "C Street
residents have all agreed they won't talk about their private living arrangements." That's the newspaper, paraphrasing Wamp.
Similarly, "pact" is the newspaper's characterization. Nowhere in the article is Wamp quoted as describing something as a
pact.
Nevertheless, it's hard to fault the logical leaps Maddow is making, based upon what she read in the newspaper. Clearly,
Wamp is party to some sort of agreement to secrecy. And Maddow is right to be aggrieved over the fact that she is fielding
these complaints, and not the News Sentinel, as she is merely repeating the conclusions reached by their reporter.
In that case, I have to agree with Maddow when she says, "But Congressman Wamp, if you say something to your hometown paper
that sounds bad when repeated on national television, don't blame the person reading your quote back to you for how creepy
that quote makes you sound."
This "Church" needs to be investigated asap! Ash &Bar
