Here is a followup to yesterday's political discussion on the Midday show. I will be reading this on the air after the NPR news at 1 pm, and then we'll attempt to have an objective analysis of something that actually matters in the 2008 presidential election -- what Barack Obama and John McCain propose to expand and pay for health care in the United States.

YESTERDAY ON THE SHOW, A CALLER AND A GUEST BOTH MADE ASSERTIONS THAT WARRANTED FACT-CHECK AND FOLLOWUP. THE CALLER ASSERTED THAT (QUOTE)  JOHN MCCAIN PUSHED A WOMAN IN A WHEELCHAIR . . .(END QUOTE) AND, HAVING NEVER HEARD THIS CHARGE MADE BEFORE, I DECIDED TO END THE CONVERSATION AND LOOK INTO THE MATTER LATER. IT’S BAD ENOUGH THAT THE TWO PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES HAVE NOW RESORTED TO CHARACTER ATTACKS IN THE LAST MONTH OF THE CAMPAIGN; WE DON’T HAVE TO COMPOUND IT WITH UNFOUNDED ASSERTIONS ON THIS SHOW . . . . 
JUST BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN REPORTED SOMEWHERE ELSE – AND SOMEWHERE ELSE THESE DAYS COULD BE ANYWHERE FROM A PARTISAN BLOG LIKE THE UFFINGTON POST TO WIKIPEDIA – WE DO NEED TO MEET A STANDARD FOR VERACITY AND THE SOURCE MUST BE CREDIBLE. . . . 
HERE’S WHAT I FOUND OUT….. IN A SEPT. 7 STORY BY REPORTERS OF THE MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPER CHAIN, PUBLISHER OF NUMEROUS PAPERS, INCLUDING THE SACRAMENTO BEE AND THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, JOHN MCCAIN’S TEMPRAMENT WAS EXAMINED. THE HEADLINE WAS, MCCAIN’S HISTORY OF HOT TEMPER RAISES CONCERNS. DEEP IN THE STORY, THERE’S REFERENCE TO MCCAIN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH FAMILIES OF VIETNAM POW/MIAS, ADVOCATES WHO FELT THE ARIZONA SENATOR HAD NOT COOPERATED WITH THEIR DEMANDS FOR MORE INFORMATION IN THE EARLY 1990S.
HERE’S AN EXCEPRT FROM THE REPORT:

Some families of POW/MIAs  . . .  charged that McCain hadn't been aggressive enough about pursuing their lost relatives and has been reluctant to release relevant documents.
In 1992, McCain sparred with Dolores Alfond, the chairwoman of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen and Women, at a Senate hearing. McCain's prosecutor-like questioning of Alfond — available on YouTube — left her in tears. Four years later, at her group's Washington conference, about 25 members went to a Senate office building, hoping to meet with McCain. As they stood in the hall, McCain and an aide walked by. . . . Six people present have written statements describing what they saw. According to the accounts, McCain waved his hand to shoo away Jeannette Jenkins, whose cousin was last seen in South Vietnam in 1970, causing her to hit a wall. . . . As McCain continued walking, Jane Duke Gaylor, the mother of another missing serviceman, approached the senator. Gaylor, in a wheelchair equipped with portable oxygen, stretched her arms toward McCain. "McCain stopped, glared at her, raised his left arm ready to strike her, composed himself and pushed the wheelchair away from him," according to Eleanor Apodaca, the sister of an Air Force captain missing since 1967. McCain's staff wouldn't respond to requests for comment about specific incidents.

You’ll notice that the only witnesses are POW/MIA activists who were at odds with McCain. Even in situations where numerous witnesses all swear to seeing or hearing the same thing, if they all have axes to grind, such accounts can’t be considered wholly credible. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be reported – they should, but characterized as charges and assertions and the sources fully identified so that we understand the nature and context.

For more on McCain's rocky relationship with families of POWs/MIAs, here is a Sydney Schanberg piece from The Nation.

Supporters of Barack Obama would want the same standard met in any reporting about his connection to William Ayers, for instance. He is the former Weather Underground radical who has been linked to Obama, most recently by the Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. She referenced this over the weekend, telling a large crowd in Carson, California, that Obama “sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists.”

A guest on yesterday’s show, Carmen Amedori, western Maryland coordinator for the McCain campaign, pointed out that William Ayers had told the New York Times after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that he did not regret his days of raging against the Vietnam War, which included plotting with others in the Weather Underground the bombing of the Pentagon and the US Capitol in 1969. Much has been made of the fact that Ayers expressed this unapologetic sentiment immediately after 9/11, but he has said the quotes were from his memoir, Fugitive Days, published before 9/11, and were given to the Times wholly in the context of Vietnam War protests and not the al Qaeda-linked attacks on the U.S. in 2001. Ayers denied that the Weather Underground members were terrorists. "The reason we weren't terrorists,” he told an interviewer, “is because we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced in the countryside of Vietnam by the United States."
If you want to read more about the relationship between Obama and Ayers, go to this New York Times piece of October 3 by reporter Scott Shane.