The Huffington Post and the Associated Press are reviving a smear both perpetrated against Sarah Palin about a year ago. At the same time, most of Palin's defenders aren't taking effective steps to counter-act what HuffPost and the AP are doing.

In October of last year, AP writers Garance Burke and Justin Pritchard wrote about one of Palin's resume points, a pipeline deal. As contemporaneously discussed here, the Anchorage Daily News - not exactly a Palin fan - called the AP article "remarkably skewed". The Juneau Empire quoted Democrats coming to Palin's defense over the deal; one Democrat said the AP story was "way off base" and another said "I don't think this story was fair and accurate". (Note that the AP story was printed at the HuffPost among other places).

Flash forward to today, where the HuffPost offers '"Going Rogue": The 18 Biggest Falsehoods In Palin's Book' [1]. They're letting their readers choose the biggest supposed falsehood and the current top choice is based on the misleading AP story from last year. That links to yet another misleading AP story, this one the recent and somewhat infamous story which involved eleven AP writers "fact-checking" Palin's book [2]; one of the "fact checks" was based on the pipeline story.

In a way it's difficult to deal with things like this because of all the noise; the HuffPost link at [1] has thousands of comments. One thing that can be done is to highlight the names of the reporters in order to inform others that they aren't trustworthy; that's one of the things we do here that most others don't do. If others would help tie the names of reporters to examples of them misleading, that would send a message to those reporters that they need to improve their coverage.

While, just for two examples, both Mark Steyn at National Review [3] and Powerline [4] discussed how the AP used eleven writers on the "fact check" and mentioned Garance Burke (linked above) as one of those involved, neither of them made the AP writers themselves the story, and both of their posts will have little long-term effect; both are more or less simply lightweight entertainment. The AP's recent "fact check" would probably be different if they and others had been doing things the right way since last year.

[1] From huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/17/going-rogue-the-18-bigges_n_359837.html

Palin says her team overseeing a natural gas pipeline set up an open, competitive bidding process. An AP investigation found they crafted terms that favored only a few companies and ultimately benefited one with ties to her administration.

[2] From huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/13/palins-book-goes-rogue-on_n_357682.html

PALIN: She says her team overseeing the development of a natural gas pipeline set up an open, competitive bidding process that allowed any company to compete for the right to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48.

THE FACTS: Palin characterized the pipeline deal the same way before an AP investigation found her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited a company with ties to her administration, TransCanada Corp. Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders during the process, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.

[3] corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=
MTE2YmEyMDZkM2Y3NjAzYWZjOTRmYjExZDg4MGE0NzE=

[4] powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024946.php