Hey, so they didn't believe us about the FOX News outburst yesterday at the Dean-Reid meeting, but they fact-checked, and found out we were right, and they reported that fact. And good for them (and us). Interesting that the Post left out the juicy bit about themselves, as CJR rightfully points out.
...thanks to the magic of blogs, we also get a bit of the backstory to share. Wonkette, The Huffington Post and AMERICAblog report that, when Leibovich asked Wilson who he was, Wilson screamed back, "Who the fuck are YOU?" According to AMERICAblog and Wonkette, Leibovich asked the question because "Wilson was apparently wearing no credential of any kind ... and behaving 'bizarrely angry.'" Those blogs also claim Leibovich said later that he asked Wilson who he was "because of his incredibly pointed questions"; Leibovich, say the blogs, "wondered whether or not [Wilson] was a rogue Republican staffer." All three blogs wrote that Wilson later stormed down Senate halls, screaming obscenities.
Skeptical of such accounts, we cornered Leibovich today. "Yeah, I can confirm it," he said. "It involved Brian Wilson of Fox News -- not of the Beach Boys. And he was not giving out good vibrations." He said Wilson wasn't holding a notebook, and, "for all I knew he was Jeff Gannon, based on the tone and insistence of his questions."
We asked Leibovich why his story -- which, after all, was about reporters behaving badly -- didn't include his own exchange with Wilson. He referred us to his editor, Steve Reiss, who told us, "I think the story was properly focused on the scene with Dean and Reid and Durbin."
