Misrepresenting Howard Dean

In his careless misreading of a Cornell Daily Sun report on Howard Dean's speech at Cornell, columnist Robert Novak on CNN claimed Dean said that if left untended, over the years Social Security will lose about 80 percent of the benefits. The Republican National Committee thought so much of it that it posted Novak's comment on its website, with a link to the CNN video of Novak. However, what Dean said was that if left alone for 30 years SSI benefits would be reduced to 80 percent of what it is now. In other words Novak was off by 60 percent in his misrepresentation of Dean. Let us see how long it takes for the RNC or Novak to correct the error.

Update: The RNC website deleted the reference to Novak citing Dean within a day, but did not mention its error nor apologize. Novak was quoted by CNN's Judy Woodruff several days later as stating he had meant to cite Dean as saying SSI would be reduced to 80 percent of its current benefits, not by 80 percent. Media Matters for America, which commented in some detail on this whole issue, noted that (as of March 7) Rush Limbaugh was still citing Novak's original statement without correction..