Les Jones

Media Behaving Badly > Update on NPR's "Swing Voter"

I mentioned a few weeks ago that NPR ran a week-long special interviewing swing voters, including an NRP contributor named John Ridley. People quickly searched OpenSecrets.org and discovered that arlier this year a man in Los Angeles named John Ridley had donated $500 to Kerry's campaign and $500 to Wesley Clark's campaign. You can see the info here.

NPR's ombudsman responded to complaints and confirmed that their John Ridley had donated the money, and that their interview had failed to discover that fact. Ridley claims he gave money to Republicans, but in amounts that fell under the $200 reporting threshhold. At this point, I think the burden of proof is on him to prove it. From what I can tell, and from what Bill Raftery says after reading the transcript, NPR has still not acknowledged the Clark contribution. The National Review has a response to the ombudsman.