Sen. Dirty Harry Coates, fresh off ruining the promising career of a weak-minded Enid state senator this week, has marred two more reputations. Two Tulsa World reporters, attempting to come to the rescue of Coates' toady Sen. Patrick Anderson, botched an easy story about an incident in this week's "official English" proceedings, and now it's the reporters who have egg on their faces.

In a piece that would have been given an "F" by a first year journalism instructor, World reporters Mick Hinton and Barbara Hoberock penned a breathless and dramatic story that defies both logic and eyewitness accounts.

The story alleges State Rep. Randy Terrill threatened Anderson with physical violence, despite denials by Terrill and an eyewitness. The setting for the alleged encounter was revealed to OKPNS readers, but ignored by the capitol reporters until today.

Further, Anderson's statement comes one day after he told his local paper the whole incident was "a practical joke." Anderson apparently felt so bad about his childish behavior that he sent flowers to Terrill's personal assistant, but changed his tale when presented the opportunity by the 'big city' papers. Hinton and Hoberock obviously didn't check Anderson's story from the previous day, a journalistic faux pas so glaring that no doubt their editors will be speaking to the pair about the gaffe.

The latest incident is the third time in 3 days Anderson has changed his tale, beginning with "no comment" the day OKPNS outed his alliance with flaky Senator Harry Coates of Seminole.

"It's not unusual to see error-filled and disjointed stories from Hinton," one capitol observer tells OKPNS, "but it really is a very, very poorly written story with a misleading headline designed to assist Anderson, who will probably lose a primary fight over this issue if he draws a respectable opponent. I'm sure when the reporters find out how they've been duped, it will help them be a little less naive next time."

While we at OKPNS consistently uncover hypocrisy in the capitol press corps, it's simply amazing to see them confirm the stereotype time after time. Here's the account Anderson gave his paper on Wednesday, and his radically different account only one day later.

Developing......

Labels: Press Bias, Rep. Randy Terrill, Sen. Harry Coates, Sen. Patrick Anderson

Posted at 5/09/2008 02:42:00 PM