We’ve previously identified Brent Baker as one of the Media Research Center’s leaders in misportraying a quote out of a 2003 Boston Globe profile of Ted Kennedy by Charles Pierce. Despite what Baker and his MRC fellow travelers insist, Pierce’s statement that “If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age” is not meant as praise; rather, Pierce has pointed out that it’s part of a larger statement that the Chappaquiddick incident effectively kept Kennedy from having the “moral credibility” to be president.
But facts don’t matter to Baker, for he misportrays the statement again in an April 17 NewsBusters post, in which he complained that an opinion about Ronald Reagan in an HBO documentary “relied on the expert assessment of a journalist who a few years ago contended that if only Senator Ted Kennedy hadn’t killed her, he “would have brought comfort…in her old age” to Mary Jo Kopechne.” Baker added: “Pierce is infamous for his 2003 Globe Magazine tribute to Ted Kennedy in which he ludicrously postulated: ‘If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.'”
It’s hard to imagine such repeated misportrals are accidental since they’ve been going on for seven years.
Is it too much for Baker to admit that he’s wrong, that he’s been misusing Pierce’s quote for seven years, and that he should apologize to Pierce? It appears so.