Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos Misrepresent Hillary Clinton on The Michelle Obama "Proud Of My Country" Flap

This is from yesterday — pre-McCain whirlwind, but I don't want it to fall through the cracks, so here goes: For the second night in a row, the top story of Charlie Gibson's newscast made my head whip around. Remember yesterday? When it was the candidate's wives who were in the news? The story wasn't only that Michelle Obama had said that "for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country," causing a number of pundits to call her patriotism into question, the story was that the usually-mute Cindy McCain stepped up to smack her down, saying "I'm proud of my country, I don't know about you, if you heard those words earlier." Drama! Controversy! Yesterday, in the Pre-NYT-McCain-Story world, it was a big deal on cable — back when it covered the campaign — up to and including when Michelle Obama saw fit to clarify her remarks and say, yes, she actually was proud of her country.

Which is why I damn near fell off my chair at how Charlie Gibson introduced the clip. Here's what he said: "Michelle Obama said something on Monday - the Clinton campaign trying to jump on every potential mistake that the Obama campaign makes - Michelle Obama said something on Monday that they are talking a lot about. Let's take a look."

Here's the thing: The Clinton campaign actually did not jump on this. As I said before, that fell to Cindy McCain; the Clinton campaign didn't mention it, not in their daily conference call and not, it seems, on the stump. At all. Yet, not only did Gibson casually introduce that untruth to millions and millions of his viewers, crack beltway insider George Stephanopoulos didn't say anything about it, either. Here's the clip:

This, by the way, is a cautionary blogging tale of what can happen when you sit on a post for a day — yesterday, my original title of "Cindy McCain Finally Says Something" would have totally resonated; today, her comments supporting her husband against the allegations of the New York Times are a notable part of the story. Either way, I thought that it was worth bringing this up, because the nightly news anchors' megaphones are huge, and this is the sort of thing that is important to get right.

Related:
Cindy McCain Loves America, Dammit [MSNBC]