Media Firestorm Over (Repeated) McCain Al Qaeda Gaffe? Hardly

NBC's Todd: "[H]ad Clinton or Obama done something like this, this would have been played on a loop, over and over"

Washington, DC - On March 18, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain made an admittedly false claim to reporters in Amman, Jordan, asserting that Iranian operatives are "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back" -- an assertion he made not just once, but twice, in the same press conference.

After Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who was with McCain, reportedly whispered something in his ear, McCain reportedly corrected himself, saying: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."

But it wasn't the first time McCain made the same false statement. During an interview with nationally syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt just one day earlier on March 17, McCain had said, "As you know, there are Al Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they're moving back into Iraq."

And how have the media responded? Has there been wall-to-wall coverage on this major foreign policy gaffe by a politician that claims to be "ready from day one," according to his campaign website? Hardly. As NBC News political director Chuck Todd observed, "[H]ad Clinton or Obama done something like this, this would have been played on a loop, over and over." Some reports even offered possible excuses for McCain. In a post on his Political Punch blog, ABC News' Jake Tapper wondered, "Jet lag?" after noting Lieberman's correction of McCain.

"It looks like that BBQ for the press paid off," said Karl Frisch, a spokesman for Media Matters for America and a former staffer on McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. "What exactly is it going to take for the media to treat Sen. McCain like any other candidate rather than giving him the benefit of the doubt at every turn? If a progressive had made such a serious, repeated foreign policy gaffe one thing is clear -- you wouldn't be able to open the paper, let alone turn on the television or radio, without hearing about it."

When not brushing off the incident by making excuses for McCain, reports skipped the gaffe almost entirely, recasting the Arizona senator's remarks. Although he later reported that McCain "mistakenly said Tuesday that Iran was allowing al-Qaida fighters into the country to be trained and returned to Iraq," Associated Press writer Alfred de Montesquiou initially reported that McCain "voiced concern that Tehran is bringing militants over the border into Iran for training before sending them back to fight U.S. troops in Iraq, and blamed Syria for allegedly continuing to 'expedite' a flow of foreign fighters."

Similarly, a March 18 United Press International article reported that during the press conference, McCain "said concern still exists that Iran could be training Iraqi extremists in Iran then returning them to Iraq." In fact, McCain did not refer simply to "militants" or "Iraqi extremists"; he claimed that Iranian operatives are "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back" and, when pressed to elaborate, asserted that it is "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known" [emphases added] -- misstatements that Washington Post reporters Cameron W. Barr and Michael D. Shear wrote "threatened to undermine McCain's argument that his decades of foreign policy experience make him the natural choice to lead a country at war with terrorists."

Media Matters for America is a progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

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