A Sept. 28 NewsBusters post by Warner Todd Huston was less than eager to tell the full story about the bracelet carrying the name of deceased soldier Ryan Jopek that Barack Obama said he was wearing as a counter to the soldier bracelet John McCain’s bragged about wearing. Huston promoted a claim by Jopek’s father that “his family had asked Barack Obama to stop wearing the bracelet with his son’s name on it. Yet Obama continues to do so despite the wishes of the family.”
It’s not until Huston updated his post later in the day that he takes a stab at telling the other side of the story, citing an Associated Press article in which Jopek’s mother weighs in, quoting only her statements that she “asked Obama not to mention the bracelet on the campaign trail” and that she was “satisfied” with how Obama discussed the bracelet in the presidential debate.
Ignoring the fact that the mother’s claim that she “asked Obama not to mention the bracelet” is substantively different from the father’s claim that he asked Obama “to stop wearing the bracelet,” Huston asserted: “The fact remains, the woman has repeated that she asked Obama not to mention her son on the campaign trail and this AP report confirms that.” But he ignored the AP article’s claim that while she “never got a reply” to her request for Obama not to mention the bracelet, she “said she didn’t hear of him mentioning it after that” until the debate.
Sounds to us like Obama kept his word until McCain felt the need to play up his dead-soldier credentials at the debate.
Over at Newsmax, Phil Brennan cited Huston’s post for a Sept. 28 article claiming that Jopek’s father said “his ex-wife [Jopek’s mother] had asked Obama to stop using the bracelet as a publicity stunt.” He makes no mention of the AP article Newsmax published the same day repeating the mother’s claim that she approved of the mention.