Correction Request: Talking Points Memo

UPDATE: Talking Points Memo has issued an update acknowledging some comments made in the post highlighted at Big Journalism were in error.

In Josh Marshall’s article “What were they thinking?” of January 27th, 2010, Mr. Marshall referrs to a wiretapping plot and four times to a plot to bug the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu by James O’Keefe and the three other conservative activists:

-O’Keefe was allegedly using his cell phone to film the attempt to bug Landrieu’s office as it happened.

-And let’s say they got something really juicy off of Sen. Landrieu’s tapped phone line. What exactly were they going to do with it?

-But they were never going to protect you from an investigation into bugging the office of a United States senator.

-Now, one might speculate that they were going to use the bug to get leads that they would then report out and surface by other means.

-And filming the bugging as it happened definitely suggests they didn’t plan on keeping the thing a secret.

There are no allegations of any wiretap plot in the FBI affidavit, and a law enforcement official has conceded that the four men were not attempting to wiretap, bug, or intercept calls. Furthermore, legal representation for the accused has gone on record stating there were no intentions to tap phones in the Senator’s office.

We kindly ask you to issue a correction/retraction to the story.

We have been/will be making similar requests of other news sources to correct similar errors. Some, such as the Washington Post and MSNBC’s David Shuster, already have posted corrections or retractions.