Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Maine Senate candidate's campaign edits critical quotes out of profile, admits error

The campaign of independent Senate candidate Angus King in Maine edited a newspaper profile so that lines critical of the former governor were stripped out before it was posted to the campaign website. 

A campaign spokeswoman, though, explained to FoxNews.com that the edits were made by a "web administrator" without permission from the rest of the campaign -- and that the problem has been "corrected." 

The lengthy profile was first published by the Maine Sunday Telegram. The related Portland Press Herald first reported Tuesday that key sections of it were taken out when it was posted to the King campaign website. 

Among the lines removed, according to the newspaper, was one in which former Press Herald reporter Paul Carrier said King "could be thin-skinned and controlling behind the scenes." 

Carrier later told his former newspaper that "it seems to me that if the King campaign redacted my quote about him being thin-skinned and controlling, it suggests that he's thin-skinned and controlling." 

Another quote was removed in which a source said King's second term as governor hadn't "held up to his first." 

Also removed were references to lobbying for environmental groups. 

King spokeswoman Crystal Canney said the web administrator who made the changes did so simply to shorten the piece. She noted that "nine paragraphs of positive material" also were removed -- and the prior posting did include a link to the full piece. 

Still, she said, it shouldn't have happened. 

"We had a web administrator who took it upon herself to do it and as soon as we found out about it we corrected it," she said. 

At the request of the newspaper, Canney said, the campaign has since posted the first few sentences of the story and linked back to the original.