AP falsely suggested Obama said his state Senate records do not "exist at all"

[babylonsister]

http://mediamatters.org/items/200711150016?f=h_top

AP falsely suggested Obama said his state Senate records do not "exist at all"


Summary: The Associated Press reported that Sen. Barack Obama "says he can't step up and produce his own records from his days in the Illinois state Senate. He says he hasn't got any." But Obama did not claim that the documents do not exist. In fact, the article quoted Obama saying: "I don't have -- I don't maintain -- a file of eight years of work in the state Senate because I didn't have the resources available to maintain those kinds of records."

A November 14 Associated Press article quoted Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) saying of his Illinois state Senate records: "I don't have -- I don't maintain -- a file of eight years of work in the state Senate because I didn't have the resources available to maintain those kinds of records." But the article, by Mike Baker and Christopher Wills, went on to report: "While any file from Obama's time in the state Senate would be far smaller, the idea that no papers exist at all is questioned by one historian," and then quoted historian Tyler Pensoneau saying, "It goes in scrapbooks or maybe boxes. I don't think it's normal practice to say it's all discarded." But as the very quote by Obama included in the article makes clear, Obama did not say that "no papers exist at all," nor did he say that "it's all discarded"; he said he did not have the resources to maintain the records for eight years of work. Some records from Obama's state Senate career, as the AP later acknowledged, are available via public records requests from various state agencies.

Chicago Sun-Times Washington bureau chief Lynn Sweet quoted Obama making a similar statement about his records in a November 10 column. According to Sweet, Obama said, "I had one staff person, that was what was allocated. I don't have archivists in the state Senate. I don't have the Barack Obama state Senate library available to me, so we had a bunch of file cabinets. I do not have a whole bunch of records from those years." The AP did note that "Illinois agencies have copies of his requests for information or help, but accessing those records would involve contacting the agencies and asking them to comb though eight years of records to find correspondence from Obama."

According to a statement by the Obama campaign:

The reporter failed to contact State Senator Kwame Raoul to confirm that Senator Obama provided him with records tracking constituent requests and casework.

The reporter failed to contact other State Senators who served at the time and would confirm that they, like Obama, did not keep records beyond those that the state archived even though contact information was provided.

And it takes a months-old conversation about whether or not Obama had ever intervened in any capacity in a domestic or international criminal trial in his career in public office out of context and implies the inquiry related to Senate records.

snip//

Obama has no legal obligation to archive his state papers.

"I was in the state Senate for eight years," Obama said. "I had one staff person, that was what was allocated. I don't have archivists in the state Senate. I don't have the Barack Obama state Senate library available to me, so we had a bunch of file cabinets. I do not have a whole bunch of records from those years. Now, if there are particular documents that you are interested in, then you should let us know."

[madrchsod]

1. sweet does not like obama....

i guess he does`t worship at her feet like other illinois politicos do

[ellisonz]

2. Exactly. He only had *one* staff member!

MSM:mad:

[loyalsister]

3. much ado about nothing for the most part

But, I think that Obama should have anticipated this request.
It would have saved him a lot of headache to have requested all of this documentation himself so that it would be readily available.
Chalk it up to inexperience.
But, the advisors and consultants should have had it covered.

[ClarkUSA]

4. AP screws up again. How surprising. Not.

The Chicago Sun-Times is a right-wing rag that is the home of Bob Novak. They endorsed Bush twice and are as
fair and balanced in their political coverage as Fox News. Lynn Sweet never fails to stick a shiv in whenever she's
on air.

[AtomicKitten]

5. I think this was pressed by the Clinton campaign to distract from

her own issues with records.