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Rick Perry was in New Hampshire on Saturday. He spoke at an event at the home of Chuck Stephen co-hosted by John Stephen, the former Republican gubernatorial nominee. Human Events reported on Sunday that the coverage of the event by the Associated Press left out some significant information.
This is an excerpt from the Associated Press article:
Speaking to hundreds of Granite State voters at a private reception, the Texas governor was asked whether he supported a fence along the Mexican border. “No, I don’t support a fence on the border,” he said.
“The fact is, it’s 1,200 miles from Brownsville to El Paso. Two things: How long you think it would take to build that? And then if you build a 30-foot wall from El Paso to Brownsville, the 35-foot ladder business gets real good.”
The answer produced an angry shout from at least one audience member.
Channel 7 (WHIOTV) in Ohio did a slightly better job of reporting the speech:
“No, I don’t support a fence on the border,” he said, while referring to the long border in Texas alone. “The fact is, it’s 1,200 miles from Brownsville to El Paso. Two things: How long you think it would take to build that? And then if you build a 30-foot wall from El Paso to Brownsville, the 35-foot ladder business gets real good.”
Instead, Perry said he supported “strategic fencing” and National Guard troops to prevent illegal immigration and violence from Mexican drug cartels.
The answer produced an angry shout from at least one audience member. And it exposed an ongoing rift with some conservative voters over Perry’s immigration record.
That’s a little better. However, a website called Instapundit posted a first-hand account:
A BLOG REPORT FROM RICK PERRY’S SPEECH IN NEW HAMPSHIRE: “I attended that event, stood about 15 feet from where he delivered those remarks and never heard an ‘angry shout’. Either the AP is making it up or it wasn’t much of a shout. Perhaps they can supply the audio.”
Maybe it was a reporter in the back who was doing the shouting. But after the 2004 bogus-boos incident, I encourage bloggers and others attending these events to record audio and video. You never know what’ll happen — or what people will report happened, even if it didn’t.
This election season every voter will need to be careful when gathering news and deciding on candidates. Unfortunately much of the major media is no longer objective and is reporting things that didn’t happen or not reporting important facts. There are many places on the internet (hopefully this is one of them) where a voter can go to fact check and get the whole story. Be careful what you read, and stay informed. That is the only way to preserve our freedom.
