A day after he reported the office of Rep. Sean Duffy’s (R-WI) false accusation that TPM posted “selectively edited” video of Duffy talking about “struggling” on his $174,000/year salary, Johns corrected the record and reported that, in fact, TPM had posted the full clip until the the Polk County GOP forced its removal.
Speaking on CNN Newsroom Friday afternoon, Johns told anchor Brooke Baldwin that Duffy’s suggestion that TPM selectively clipped the tape was, in fact, not true.
“Well Duffy’s press secretary yesterday complained to us and said this video, which appeared on TPM.com, had been selectively edited,” Johns said. “Well we got a response from TPM, they deny selective editing.”
On Tuesday, TPM posted a 5-minute clip of Duffy discussing his salary at a Polk County, WI town hall meeting. The clip had been shot, edited and posted by the local Republican Party and then removed from their site after it started to draw criticism from Democrats, who mocked Duffy for suggesting that his salary — which is more than three times the median income for Wisconsin households — wasn’t enough to make ends meet.
On the advice of attorneys, TPM posted a 1 minute portion of the tape Wednesday after the Polk County GOP forced our video hosting service to take it down. Following Johns’ report that TPM had posted a “selectively edited” version of the clip, we put up the full version once again.
On Friday, Johns acknowledged that TPM had posted the full tape at first, and called on viewers to “judge for yourself.”
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