ABC stole the Left's mojo on a McCain-slamming "pastor problem" story.
Why am I not surprised?
Here's the complaint of David Corn at Mother Jones magazine's MoJo blog yesterday (h/t Romenesko):
I'm glad that Good Morning America covered the connection between John McCain and Rod Parsley, the Ohio megachurch pastor who has said it is the United States' historic mission to see the "false religion" of Islam "destroyed."
But did ABC News' top investigative reporter, Brian Ross, have to swipe the story from us?
In the lead-in to piece, Diane Sawyer calls it an "exclusive Brian Ross investigation." Exclusive? How so? On March 12, Mother Jones first reported that Parsley, whom McCain had recently campaigned with and hailed as "a spiritual guide," had written a book in 2005, Silent No More, in which he essentially called for the eradication of Islam and branded the entire faith as a satanic conspiracy. The article noted that McCain had accepted Parsley's endorsement and explained that Parsley is a key political player in Ohio, where he has registered and driven to the polls tens of thousands of social conservative voters. Many websites and blogs linked to the article.
In an update, Corn noted that Ross phoned Mother Jones to apologize:
Brain Ross called to apologize. He said that it had been wrong for Diane Sawyer to tag his piece an "exclusive" and that he had been unaware of my stories on Parsley. He offered to revise the written on-line version of the piece to note that Mother Jones had the Parsley story first.
