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Mitt Romney bullying story holds up to scrutiny (WaPo: Unverified quotes, 2nd-hand "sources" are ok)
Washington Post (Omblog) ^ | 5/11/2012 | Patrick B. Pexton

Posted on 05/11/2012 8:38:01 PM PDT by Qbert

The ombudsman is being bombarded by input from readers, via e-mail and phone calls, about the story that Post reporter Jason Horowitz wrote on Mitt Romney’s teenage years at the prestigious Cranbrook School in Michigan.

The story leads with an anecdote about Romney and some of his friends in his dormitory tackling and pinning to the ground an unpopular classmate and forcibly cutting off his bleached-blond, longish hair. The boy, John Lauber, was frightened and in tears, Horowitz explained, and the boy turned out to be gay.

The rest of the deeply reported story provides extensive context to Romney’s years there, what the school was like, where Romney fit in the boys’ hierarchy, and the fact that a lot of people liked the son of Michigan’s then-governor, George Romney.

Conservative Web sites have criticized the piece on several grounds.

The first is that The Post changed the text of one paragraph from the online version published on Thursday to the print version published on Friday without telling readers. It’s a description of how one of Romney’s high school friends, Stu White, felt after hearing about the hair-cutting prank. White was not present at the prank.

[Snip]

The Post changed the story after talking to White again and discovering that White only learned of the prank in recent weeks after being told of it by a Cranbrook classmate.

[Snip]

This part of Horowitz’s story is tangential at best. It is only about how one person, who was not an eyewitness, felt about the incident.

[Snip]

“Our intention with this story and future stories about both Mitt Romney and President Obama is to give people the fullest possible portrait of the men who are running for president. We will continue to explore their biographies, their decision-making, and their full lives.”

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: romney; romney2012; wapo; washingtonpost
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To: liberalh8ter

“I guess WaPo hasn’t heard the family has stated the story is factually incorrect.”

It doesn’t matter whether the story is true. It is the gravity of the charges.


61 posted on 05/12/2012 10:28:33 AM PDT by Peet (Everything has an end -- only the sausage has two.)
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To: ansel12

Mitt’s sleazy because of something the WP made up.

That makes a lot of sense.


62 posted on 05/12/2012 10:55:37 AM PDT by IMR 4350
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To: ansel12

Mitt’s sleazy because of something the WP made up.

That makes a lot of sense.


63 posted on 05/12/2012 10:55:37 AM PDT by IMR 4350
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To: IMR 4350

Do you think that JR, the owner of this site, started, and maintains for conservatives, the Romney truth files, because of this weeks WP article?


64 posted on 05/12/2012 2:13:13 PM PDT by ansel12 ( Not voting Romney?? Then double up on down ticket races and your participation this election.)
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