Sanders & the foreign policy fight that wasn’t
By CNN, The Hill and apparently 98% of Twitter have picked up this story from the ace reporters at Yahoo! News:
A top aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., one of the three candidates, got into a lengthy dispute with executives from CBS, the network hosting the debate, during a conference call on Saturday morning. A staffer for one of the other campaigns who was also on the call described the exchange to Yahoo News as “heated” and even “bizarre,” and a second source on the call confirmed the nature of the exchange.
The alleged dispute was over CBS’ decision to shift the focus of the debate to foreign policy.
However, “Ace reporters at Yahoo! News” is a clue that the story is closer to the Ben Carson, M.D. Childhood Story side of the Fib-o-Meter dial. So are the facts that the there are no named sources in the article and the writer didn’t contact Team Sanders or CBS for comment.
Someone at Time did contact Sanders’ campaign and:
A spokesman for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders campaign said that they disagreed with CBS executives only over “minor technical issues” about the debate Saturday during a conference call earlier in the day.
But that was an hour later (5 years in internet news cycle time) and the initial story has become “OMG SANDERS FOREIGN POLICY NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME ELOHEL!” At least for the next … 30 minutes.
Gonna be a loooong primary season.
Update: Politico reporter makes Yahoo! News reporter look like a pro.
