A new attack ad from the National Rifle Association (NRA) depicting a woman as a victim of a home invasion falsely attacks Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Jason Kander with the claim, “You have the right to protect your home with a firearm. But liberal politician Jason Kander voted against your right.”

But the legislation cited in the ad wasn’t about “the right to protect your home with a firearm”; instead -- as explained by a since-deleted post on the NRA’s website -- it was a bill to expand self-defense rights outside of the home, similar to controversial Stand Your Ground laws.

Kander, Missouri’s secretary of state and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, is facing incumbent Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, who has been endorsed by the NRA.

In the NRA’s September 8 ad, a narrator says, “It’s 4 a.m. and something’s not right. You have a right to protect your home with a firearm. But liberal politician Jason Kander voted against your right. … Jason Kander refused to defend your Second Amendment rights in Jefferson City. How could you trust him in Washington?” During the voiceover, a shadowy figure is seen kicking in a door while a woman sleeps. According to FEC filings, the NRA Political Victory Fund filed a September 6 notice announcing more than $650,000 in advertising spending against Kander.

In support of its claim about Kander’s record, the NRA cites a vote Kander made on House Bill 668 in 2009 while serving in the Missouri House of Representatives:

But according to an archived version of the NRA’s website, H.B. 668 “would expand Missouri’s Castle Doctrine to now include your private property boundaries” -- meaning it would have expanded the self-defense protections already available in the home to outdoor property:

As the text of the bill confirms, when H.B. 668 was being considered, Missouri’s self-defense law already provided that there is no duty to retreat before using force, including deadly force, in the home: “A person does not have a duty to retreat from a dwelling, residence, or vehicle where the person is not unlawfully entering or unlawfully remaining.”

The juxtaposition of images of a home invasion with false claims about a candidate’s record is a common tactic in NRA election ads. In 2014, an NRA ad showed a home invasion while claiming that then-Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu “voted to take away your gun rights.” In that ad, the NRA cited Landrieu’s vote in favor of expanding background checks on gun sales following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting.

PolitiFact rated the ad “pants on fire,” calling it “downright scary” and noting that it “can only be described as fear mongering.” The Washington Post’s Fact Checker similarly gave the ad “Four Pinocchios” -- its worst rating -- citing the “hyperbolic disconnect between the images on the screen and the practical impact of the law in question.”

In fact, the Landrieu ad uses the same home invasion b-roll as the Kander ad does. Here is a still from the Landrieu ad:

And a still from the Kander ad:

Fox News’ Chris Wallace has previously failed to fact-check Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s brazen lie that he opposed the Iraq War, raising further concerns about how Wallace will moderate the third and final presidential debate.

Wallace has twice before let Trump lie about his opposition to the Iraq War -- a claim that has been proved false time and time again. On February 21, when Trump appeared on Wallace’s Fox News Sunday, Wallace let the candidate say he “was against” the Iraq War “at the beginning” while offering no pushback; and on March 13, Wallace again let Trump’s claim that he “was against the war in Iraq … I’m one that said don’t go in” go unchallenged.

Wallace’s complicity in enabling Trump’s lie is troubling given that he has been tapped as moderator for the final debate between Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and that he has said it’s not his “job to be a truth squad” when moderating. Trump took the news that Wallace wouldn’t fact-check the candidates during the debates well, telling Larry King, “I can understand him saying that. … I think that the candidates should police themselves.”

Wallace’s previous disregard for Trump’s recurrent lie is even more concerning given the conflict of interest tethered to Wallace’s role as a moderator. As Media Matters founder David Brock wrote to the Commission on Presidential Debates, former Fox CEO Roger Ailes’ position advising both Trump and Rupert Murdoch -- the head of Fox’s parent company and Wallace’s boss -- represents a “glaring conflict of interest” that infringes on the credibility of any Fox News moderator. Brock has asked the commission to reconsider Wallace as a moderator.

Given NBC host Matt Lauer’s heavily criticized, fact-challenged moderation during a national security forum -- where he, too, let Trump lie about his previous Iraq War stance -- it’s crucial that the debate moderators stamp out Trump’s mendacity and ensure a fact-based debate.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) released a report on the economic impact of New York City’s requirement that employers provide workers with paid sick leave, finding that right-wing media concerns that such ordinances would create a prohibitive cost burden were “proven unfounded.” The ordinance was a particular target of the thoroughly discredited pundit Stephen Moore, who now counts himself among Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s senior economic advisers despite a consistent track record of being dead wrong on the economy.

According to a September 6 report from CEPR, fears that New York’s paid sick leave mandate would be “a major cost burden on employers” that could “invite widespread abuse by employees” have “proven unfounded.” The report surveyed 352 randomly selected businesses from October 2015 to March 2016 and found 97 percent of businesses had not reduced worker hours, 94 percent had not raised prices, and 91 percent had not reduced hiring activity as a result of the city’s paid sick leave mandate. The report also found that 96 percent of businesses reported no changes in customer service, and 94 percent reported no changes in productivity as a result of the law, which CEPR described as “a ‘non-event’ for most employers” despite the fact that the measure extended paid sick days to 1.4 million workers. The CEPR report on the successful implementation of paid sick leave in New York comes just two weeks after researchers with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that paid sick leave laws like New York’s may prevent the spread of illnesses such as the flu and significantly improve public health.

Slate reported on CEPR's findings on September 7, mocking conservative critics of the law who worried it would create, as Slate put it, “a labor force of hypochondriac slackers” and drive businesses out of the city. Slate noted that paid sick leave laws had been passed in five states, Washington, D.C., and 26 cities since San Francisco enacted a paid leave mandate in 2007, calling the development “one of American progressives’ greatest policy triumphs.” Slate also noted that New York should be a good testing ground for how paid sick leave can affect economic growth, due to the city’s large size and the similar results found elsewhere by the U.S. Department of Labor. From Slate:

Did a labor force of hypochondriac slackers cause businesses to relocate to Nassau and Westchester Counties? It doesn’t look like it: New York City’s share of metropolitan employment has actually increased, slightly, in the two years since the revised law took effect.

[...]

That jibes with findings from other cities published by the U.S. Department of Labor in October. San Francisco has outperformed surrounding counties in job growth since the passage of its policy in 2007. Likewise, analyses of Seattle and Washington, D.C. found negligible impacts on hiring and business location. A ton of research has also shown that flexible leave policies have a positive effect on worker productivity, happiness, and health.

These findings -- and the report that New York has seen the best job creation in a half-century during Mayor Bill De Blasio’s first two years in office -- offer a stark rebuke to critics of paid leave mandates like Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore. During a January 17, 2014, appearance on Fox News, Moore, who was then a Wall Street Journal editorial board member, blasted New York’s paid sick leave mandate, falsely claiming it would be “very dangerous for cities” if more such laws were enacted.

Moore’s empty criticism echoed other right-wing pundits, who had attacked paid leave as an unwarranted “entitlement” and hyped the supposed costs to businesses while ignoring the benefits for workers. Right-wing media repeatedly push such myths and routinely dismiss the need for such laws as nothing more than part of a “giant welfare giveaway utopia.” The complete failure of this particular right-wing media myth in the face of actual evidence bolsters Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman’s claim that Moore “has a troubled relationship with the facts.” Krugman speculated that in the conservative economic policy climate where Moore has made his career, perhaps his “incompetence is actually desirable” -- after all, a “smart hack might turn honest.”

Memo to the media: You cannot have it both ways on the double standard applied to presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

After NBC’s Commander in Chief Forum, reporters and pundits proclaimed that media have held the two presidential nominees to different standards of knowledge and conduct, yet these media figures have also perpetuated the double standard by excusing Trump’s behavior and applauding him any time he shows a veneer of conventionality.

Numerous media figures criticized Matt Lauer, host of the September 7 forum, for employing different questioning toward Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Lauer allowed Trump to lie about opposing the Iraq war, yet he used eight of his first nine questions for Clinton to grill her over her emails. Several media figures said Lauer’s line of questioning embodied the “double standard” that reporters across the board use to analyze the two candidates.

If Media Figures Note The Double Standard ... 

• MSNBC's Mike Barnicle: Trump Is The "Continued Beneficiary Of A Huge Double Standard." The morning after the forum, MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle told Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough that Lauer interviewed Trump “as if he were the co-host or the host of The Apprentice,” rather than a presidential candidate, noting, “Syria wasn’t mentioned. Aleppo wasn’t mentioned. The refugee crisis wasn’t mentioned.” He noted that the forum showed Trump is the “continued beneficiary of a huge double standard.”
   
• Wash. Post Contributor Paul Waldman: “Hillary Clinton Gets Examined In A Very Different Way Than Donald Trump Does.” Following the forum, Washington Post contributor Paul Waldman explained that Clinton “gets examined in a very different way than Trump does” by the media. Speaking on the September 7 edition of MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, Waldman faulted media for taking an “all hands on deck mentality” when reporting Clinton news -- saying that “everybody will investigate every nook and cranny to see if there’s anything there that looks untoward. And even if there isn’t, it becomes this story that drags out over the course of days and even weeks” -- as opposed to “strings of issues” about Trump that are reported once and then forgotten.
   
• Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin: “Trump Is Being Held To A Less High Standard.” ” Prior to the forum, Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin told co-host John Heilemann that “the Clinton campaign is right” that “Trump is being held to a less high standard” by reporters and that “the press is just not holding him accountable.” Halperin continued, “Trump is doing things that if Clinton did, she would be hit a lot harder,” and he urged media to “work on fixing that.” Co-host John Heilemann agreed with Halperin, despite having defended the double standard the week prior, when he said that “sometimes … you have to set the bar low” for Trump.
   
• NY Times' Maggie Haberman: "The Bar Has Been Lowered For Trump Repeatedly." New York Times political correspondent Maggie Haberman said on CNN’s New Day leading up to the forum that Trump “keeps getting graded on a curve” and “the bar has been lowered for Trump repeatedly.” Haberman criticized media figures who assess Trump by asking, “Does he merely pass?” And then if he does, they record it as Trump “did very well.”
   
• NY Times’ James Poniewozik Slams Lauer For Questioning Trump On A Curve. New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik scolded Lauer for treating Clinton “like someone running for president” but Trump “like someone running to figure out how to be president, eventually.” Poniewozik wrote that after grilling Clinton on her private email server, Lauer pitched Trump “the kind of whiffle ball job-interview” questions “you ask the boss’s nephew you know you have to hire anyway.”
   
• CNN’s Brian Stelter: “It Is True That Trump Is Held To A Different Standard Than Clinton.” The day after the forum, CNN media reporter Brian Stelter told CNN host Ashleigh Banfield that “it is true that Trump is held to a different standard than Clinton” and said that “no doubt, at the forum, there was different treatment for Trump versus Clinton.”

... But Have Perpetuated It ...

Despite all this commentary, media figures have consistently perpetuated the double standard, holding Trump to a lower bar than they do Clinton in terms of behavioral and ethical conduct -- and in measures of veracity. Most recently, when a report came out that Trump paid a fine to the IRS for making an illegal $25,000 donation to the 2013 re-election campaign of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, broadcast news networks devoted a third as much as time to the matter as they provided to a flawed Associated Press story on the Clinton Foundation that proved no ethics breaches.

Media figures have previously repeatedly pardoned Trump’s widely criticized rhetoric, policy flip-flops, and divisive comments because he’s “not a politician” and is “learning as he goes”:

• Fox Hosts Excused Trump's Abortion Comments Because "He's Learning As He Goes." Hosts of Fox News’ Fox & Friends excused Trump’s statement in March that there should be some kind of punishment for women who obtain abortions, suggesting that Trump should not be expected to answer questions about abortion because they’re usually reserved for more experienced politicians. Co-host Steve Doocy excused Trump, saying, “He only became a politician about six or seven months ago.”
   
• CNN’s Mark Preston: “You Have To Expect” Trump Will Abandon His Positions; He Can’t Be Thought Of In “Conventional Terms.” CNN political executive editor Mark Preston told New Day host Chris Cuomo in May that he was not surprised the presumptive nominee “took a half-step back” on banning Muslim immigrants because he can't be thought of in “conventional terms,” but rather “in Donald Trump terms.”
   
• The Daily Beast’s Jackie Kucinich: “Consistency Should Be An Argument Against Donald Trump,” But Trump “Isn’t A Normal Candidate.” Daily Beast Washington bureau chief Jackie Kucinich claimed in May that while “consistency should be an argument against” Trump “in a normal political system,” Trump is “not a normal candidate” and thus his policy reversals might not affect him.

Media have also absurdly applauded Trump any time he has appeared to assume even the slightest veneer of conventional, tempered behavior:

• Reading A Speech From A Teleprompter: Media figures praised Trump as “presidential” in early June for delivering one speech with the aid of a teleprompter. Fox anchor Megyn Kelly praised Trump for being “a little bit more controlled using the teleprompter, which is something we almost never see him do, staying on message.”
   
• Delivering One Speech Devoid Of Racist Attacks: Following the same speech, media figures also praised Trump as “presidential” for refraining from launching racist attacks against the federal judge presiding over Trump University lawsuits, which Trump had done for multiple days prior. CNN host Don Lemon said the “new, more presidential Donald Trump” is what “people in Washington wanted to see.”
   
• Rebutting A Joke About His Penis Size: Fox doctor Keith Ablow praised Donald Trump for “show[ing] an incredible degree of psychological strength” in responding to a joke about the size of his hands by referencing the size of his penis.
   
• Not Calling Then-Opponent Ted Cruz “Lyin’ Ted”: Following Trump’s April victory in the New York primary, Fox’s Megyn Kelly and ABC’s Tom Llamas said Trump was becoming “more presidential” and “trying out a more presidential style” because he did not call his opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), “Lyin’ Ted.” Trump returned to using the phrase the next day.

... Will They Change? 

Now that political media have admitted their own shortcomings in the cautionary tale of Lauer, will they level the playing field between Clinton and Trump?

Researcher Tyler Cherry contributed research to this post.

Thanks to the release this week of a January 2009 email from Colin Powell to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, we now know definitively that the former Republican secretary of state advised Clinton on the wisdom of using private emails during her time at the State Department. We know that Powell thought it was fine to use that private email account to bypass State Department servers to communicate with friends and even “foreign leaders.”

We know Powell advised Clinton on how to circumvent federal records requirements while she was secretary of state: “Be very careful. … I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data.” We know that while Clinton used private email for convenience, she didn't follow Powell's lead in seeking to deliberately use systems that avoided future public disclosures.

The Republican also complained that State Department officials didn’t want him using his PDA, what he termed an "ancient version" of Clinton's Blackberry: “[T]hey gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, etc." But Powell said he ignored those warnings and used his PDA in his office suite.

As for the whereabouts of Powell’s own emails from his time at the State Department, “during his tenure, Powell had sent classified emails over his private AOL account - but as of July, had still not responded to a request to contact his service provider to retrieve them,” according to USA Today. “In both 2014 and 2015, the State Department asked Powell to provide all of his records that were not in the agency’s record-keeping system.” As Powell's email to Clinton suggested, he no longer has the emails from his personal account; the records of those communications with national and international leaders during his tenure as secretary of state are gone. (Powell defends the contents of his email to Clinton.)

That limbo status stands in sharp contrast to extraordinary scrutiny the press and Republicans have placed on Clinton’s private account emails, tens of thousands of which she voluntarily turned over to the government and have since been released to the public.

These helpful Powell revelations provide some welcome context to the email story. They also raise questions about how the press will deal with the new information, and why the press has seemed so uninterested in including the context of Powell's actions over the last year-and-a-half as it relentlessly pursued the Clinton email “scandal” story.

Keep in mind that we’ve known for quite a while that Powell used a private email account while serving secretary of state. And since March, we’ve known that Powell "handled classified material on unclassified email systems," according to ABC News, and that some of Powell’s emails contained "information classified at the Secret or Confidential levels.'" 

Yet for the most part, Powell’s name has been invoked sparingly by the media, despite the avalanche of Clinton email coverage and commentary.

Why the omission? I think it’s because including context about Powell and how previous secretaries of state handled their electronic communication undermines the media’s longstanding narrative about the current email story. The press has clung to the idea that it is uniquely and unequivocally about Hillary Clinton, and the reason it’s so important, and why it requires so much attention, is that it illustrated how Hillary Clinton, and Hillary Clinton alone, is secretive and tries to obfuscate the rules.

Except that’s just not true.

Is Powell absolutely central to the Clinton email story? No. Does his experience radically alter the contours of Clinton’s actions, for which she has repeatedly apologized? It does not. But does Powell’s email past provide much-needed and often missing context to the press’ Clinton email narrative? It sure does.

“To liken her to Powell does not excuse Clinton’s behavior or imply the media should ignore it. It contextualizes it,” wrote Jonathan Chait at New York, following the release of Powell’s 2009 correspondence to Clinton. “And the context suggests that Clinton committed ordinary lapses of ethics and judgment.”

Correct. But if Clinton’s supposedly guilty of “ordinary lapses of ethics and judgment,” how does the press justify continuing to treat the email story like Watergate-meets-Iran Contra, even after the FBI has concluded there is no evidence of illegality?

Again, Powell’s inclusion in the story flattens and normalizes the narrative. Powell’s inclusion signals to news consumers that Clinton’s actions maybe weren’t so scandalous. In fact, maybe they weren’t even newsworthy.

In other words, Powell ruins the plot. That’s why the press has leaned over in a concerted effort to not provide helpful context in terms of how other prominent public officials archive their emails.

The Clinton email pursuit, the press decided long ago, is best told in a vacuum. But now that vacuum has been breached.

How is the press responding to the release of Powell’s eye-opening email to Clinton? On Thursday, CNN did describe it as a “major bombshell,” so it’s not as if the story is being actively ignored. But I’d argue that in comparison to the never-ending, steroid-fueled pursuit of Clinton, the Powell story certainly is in no danger of being over-played by the press.

It's true that the Powell email was referenced in the FBI report released last week, and most news organizations covered it then. But in terms of the entire email being released and the important, additional context it provides to the email saga, there has been some notable silence. For instance, the Powell email was released Wednesday afternoon and as of today, The New York Times newsroom still hasn’t acknowledged that fact or detailed for readers what counsel Powell gave Clinton. Thursday’s Washington Post did cover the Powell news Thursday, but in a brief, 400-word article that appeared on page six. (A Post editorial in Friday's newspaper admonishes the press for making too much of the Clinton email saga.) A handful of major newspapers also covered the Powell story, but none of them put the story on their front page, according to a Nexis search.

A footnote. The Powell email revelation is, for the most part, being treated as a footnote that journalists don’t want news consumers focusing on.

CNN political commentator and former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski whitewashed Trump’s birther history and falsely claimed the Republican presidential candidate “moved on” from his conspiracy theory that President Obama was not born in the U.S. After CNN’s Alisyn Camerota asked if Trump believes Obama is a citizen, Lewandowski said “the birth certificate has been produced. [Trump]’s moved on.” However in 2012, Trump resurrected his birther conspiracy theory during an interview with former Fox host Greta Van Susteren, claiming that “many, many people” questioned the validity of Obama’s long-form birth certificate. Lewandowski recently  revived Trump’s birther theory, asking if President Obama was admitted into Harvard University “as a U.S. citizen,” or  “as a citizen who wasn’t from this country?”      

CNN has received criticism for paying Lewandowski to comment on the election despite his continued ties to the Trump campaign. In addition to receiving severance from the campaign, Lewandowski is also reportedly prepping Trump for the debates and traveling with the candidate to campaign stops. In an open letter to CNN president Jeff Zucker, Media Matters president Bradley Beychok has called on Zucker to publicly address questions regarding the hiring of Lewandowski or suspend him from the network. From the September 9 edition of CNN’s New Day:

ALISYN CAMEROTA (CO-HOST): Does Donald Trump believe that President Obama was born in Hawaii? 

COREY LEWANDOWSKI: Look, of course, he said that. He said he's not going to talk about it. 

CAMEROTA: No he hasn’t.

CHRISTINE QUINN: No he has not.

CAMEROTA: He says he hasn't talked about it. He's never said he believes that. 

LEWANDOWSKI: He has said that Barack Obama has produced his birth certificate and he doesn't want to talk about it anymore. That's what he said. 

CAMEROTA: Why doesn't he say, I apologize for saying that he was not an American? 

LEWANDOWSKI: No, he asked a question. He said, produce your birth certificate. The birth certificate has been produced. He's moved on. 

QUINN: But that doesn’t mean he accepts the birth certificate.

[…]

CAMOERTA: Let me play for you what he told Bill O'Reilly, who brought it up, OK? Bill O’Reilly, not just Democrats. Fox News is bringing it up because Donald Trump is so unresolved on this issue. Let me play this for you.

QUINN: He never said he was born in Hawaii.

[BEGIN VIDEO]

BILL O’REILLY: Do you think your birther position has hurt you among African-Americans?

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know. I have no idea. I don’t even talk about it anymore, Bill.

O’REILLY: No, I know.

TRUMP: Because I just don’t want to talk about it.

O’REILLY: But it’s there. It’s on the record.

TRUMP: I don’t know. I guess with maybe some. I don’t know why. I really don’t know why.

[END VIDEO]

CAMEROTA: That’s all he says, I don’t talk about it anymore, I don’t know why. I don’t talk about it anymore. He never says I now think I was wrong.

[…]

My question is, why doesn't he say I was wrong? 

LEWANDOWSKI: Look it's a nonissue. 

CAMEROTA: No, it's not a nonissue. It keeps coming up everywhere. 

LEWANDOWSKI: He's not running against Barack Obama in this campaign. If he was, he’d win. If he’s runs against Hillary Clinton, which is a third term of Barack Obama, he’s going to win . So let's talk about Hillary Clinton, who's running for president of the United States. 

CAMEROTA: OK last word. 

QUINN: Let’s talk about Donald Trump. He has insulted the president of the United States, spread lies about his citizenship, and insulted the first African-American president of the United States. And now that he's running for president? That does deserve an apology. And yet again, Donald Trump can't admit that he's wrong and dog-whistles out there across the country to divide us, not bring us together. 

LEWANDOWSKI: Look, the president has attacked Donald Trump multiple occasions from the White House. If he wants to apologize to Donald Trump, I'm sure Donald Trump will. 

CAMEROTA: He's not saying he’s not a citizen. He’s not saying he wasn’t born here.

LEWANDOWSKI: He's said a number of egregious things, and he’s questioned his patriotism, he’s questioned a number of things about Donald Trump.

CAMEROTA: This is in a different category.

For information on Media Matters’ petition for CNN to cut ties with Lewandowski, please click here.

Media Matters founder David Brock is calling on the Commission on Presidential Debates to reconsider the eligibility of Fox News’ Chris Wallace as moderator of the October 19 presidential debate. Brock writes that former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes’ position advising both Rupert Murdoch -- the head of Fox’s parent company -- and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump represents a “glaring conflict of interest” that infringes on the credibility of any Fox News moderator.

Read the full text of his letter to the commission’s co-chairs, as first reported by Politico:

Mr. Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr.

Mr. Michael D. McCurry

Commission on Presidential Debates

1200 New Hampshire Ave NW #445 Washington, DC 20036

 

Dear Co-Chairmen Fahrenkopf and McCurry:

I am writing to request that you reconsider the eligibility of Chris Wallace as a debate moderator as a result of​ startling new public facts. I urge you to consider these facts and remove Mr. Wallace as the moderator of the third and final presidential debate.

I was concerned to read a September 8 CNN report noting that “in recent weeks, [Roger] Ailes has become one of the most influential voices in the room as [Donald] Trump prepares” for the first presidential debate. According to the CNN report, Ailes and Trump “met in person several times between June 2015 and June 2016” and since late July, Ailes “has taken on a much more active role in Trump’s campaign.”

Earlier this week on Good Morning America, Trump’s campaign manager ducked a question about whether it is appropriate for Ailes to be advising Trump. Simply put, the answer is no. It is a glaring conflict of interest that Roger Ailes, who resigned from Fox News in July, simultaneously provides advice to Donald Trump while serving as a paid adviser to Fox News chief Rupert Murdoch—debate moderator Chris Wallace’s boss.

Also troubling is Chris Wallace’s explicit pronouncement that he doesn't intend to press the candidates to be truthful during the debate he moderates. When Wallace's Fox News colleague Howard Kurtz asked what Wallace would do if either candidate made "assertions that you know to be untrue," Wallace asserted, "That's not my job. I do not believe it is my job to be a truth squad. It's up to the other person to catch them on that." Ailes and Trump may already be unduly influencing Wallace to favor Trump in the debate. The New York Times' James Poniewozik was correct when he noted that Wallace's stated fact-free approach to debate moderating helps Trump the most. The Times noted that "the fact-checking website PolitiFact has found far more false statements from Mr. Trump than from Mrs. Clinton."

I am disappointed that an organization that prides itself on being non-partisan would make such a selection. I would respectfully ask that you reconsider your selection of Chris Wallace -- or any current Fox News employee -- as a presidential debate moderator until Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch cut ties with Roger Ailes.

Sincerely,

David Brock

Founder, Media Matters for America

The Associated Press has released a statement explaining their decision to delete a 2-week-old tweet about Hillary Clinton’s meetings as Cabinet secretary after concluding the tweet fell short of AP standards by omitting essential context. According to the statement, the August 23 tweet “gave a distorted picture of” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “meetings and was not backed up by the AP’s own reporting.”

On August 23, the Associated Press published a “misleading” tweet alleging that “more than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation,” findings that the report the tweet linked to claimed indicate “possible ethics challenges if [Clinton is] elected president.”

Now, after more than two weeks of allowing the misleading tweet to circulate on Twitter, and over a week after the AP’s executive editor dubbed the tweet “sloppy” (but refused to take it down), the Associated Press has decided it is time to delete the tweet.

The decision to delete the tweet comes after “near unanimous agreement” among journalists that the AP’s tweet was “inaccurate” and “false,” and widespread criticism of the underlying AP report, which provided no evidence of wrongdoing and scandalized Clinton’s effort to aid a Nobel Peace Prize winner. House Republicans are now using the botched report to call for an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

The statement from Associated Press Vice President for Standards John Daniszewski noted that “[t]he tweet omitted [an] important distinction” in the AP report, and adds that “the controversy over the AP tweet has led us to an extensive reflection.” From the AP’s September 8 statement:

The Associated Press today is deleting a 2-week-old tweet about Hillary Clinton’s meetings as Cabinet secretary after concluding the tweet fell short of AP standards by omitting essential context.

At the same time, we are revising our practices to require removal and correction of any AP tweets found not to meet AP standards, including tweets that contain information that is incorrect, misleading, unclear or could be interpreted as unfair, or having a problem in tone.

The tweet sent on Aug. 23 was the subject of criticism from supporters of Clinton, a number of people in the media and others who said it gave a distorted picture of the secretary’s meetings and was not backed up by the AP’s own reporting.

[...]

The tweet omitted the important distinction between discretionary meetings and official meetings. It read:

BREAKING: AP analysis: More than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation.

[...]

In the earlier days of Twitter, there had been a belief that removing tweets was akin to retroactively editing a conversation; it wasn’t transparent. Additionally, tweets were seen more as providing paths to in-depth content and less as content in themselves that would remain in the public discussion for an extended period. Industry thinking on this topic has been changing. And the controversy over the AP tweet has led us to an extensive reflection on this evolution.