August 10, 2005

MN-Sen: Rep. Mark Kennedy is Editing News Stories

Rep. Mark Kennedy Republican of Minnesota campaign website for Senate is deleting negative comments from news stories before posting them on their "News" section.
A congressman's campaign Web site, under fire for deleting negative comments from news stories before posting them, will now link viewers to the full text of the articles, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. [..]

In one case, an AP article about Kennedy voting with Democrats on some legislation deleted comments from a political scientist who suggested that Kennedy was breaking with GOP party ranks to better position himself for a Senate run.

The campaign headlined the article: "Kennedy: A common-sense, get things done guy." The AP story was transmitted with a headline that read: "Kennedy siding with Democrats on host of issues."

That article was removed Wednesday; the AP had asked Kennedy to remove AP stories from the site on Tuesday.
Kennedy campaign spokeswoman Heidi Frederickson:
Kennedy campaign spokeswoman Heidi Frederickson said she was responsible for posting the news articles, which named their original sources and labeled the Web site versions as having been "excerpted." She said she believed the campaign was entitled to reprint the articles under a "fair use" exemption that allows limited portions of copyrighted articles to be cited without permission.

"It's just done to get information out," Frederickson said. "It's not done for a commercial purpose."

Frederickson said she was not aware of the AP policy barring candidates from reprinting the news service's articles.

"We will definitely look into our processes and policies, and if anything needs to be changed or modified, we will absolutely do it," she said.

When asked why some articles on the Web sites were changed from their original content, Frederickson refused to comment, except to say: "That's the way we've chosen to do it — to use those news article and present them to the audience."
Just like Fox new, The GOP we decide, we report what we want.

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