October 02, 2016 10:02 AM UTC

End of the Line for Chuck Plunkett's Very Bad Advice

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• by: Colorado Pols

Back in August, we took Denver Post editorial board chair Chuck Plunkett to task over a factually off-base opinion piece, oddly imploring underperforming GOP U.S. Senate candidate Darryl Glenn to attack his Democratic opponent over the then-headline story of a supposed $400 million “ransom” (his choice of words) paid to Iran–monies paid “in exchange,” so the talk radio story went, for the release of prisoners. In truth the settlement with Iran over purchased military hardware left undelivered after the Iranian Revolution was a decades-old issue, and it is completely wrong to classify money that isn’t yours to begin with being returned to the original owner as a “ransom payment.” Maybe that’s how Donald Trump treats his contractors, but…we digress.

Plunkett’s underlying assumptions about the Iran deal were proven wrong within a few news cycles, which made his unsolicited campaign advice for Glenn bad advice–though with all of the downright silly things Glenn regularly says we have no idea if this particular line of BS was picked up by Glenn and used on the trail. Given Glenn’s double-digit deficit in the polls, it probably doesn’t matter.

But in this weekend’s Denver Post, the same Denver Post that has kept Plunkett employed in both the newsroom and the editorial board over the years as countless good journalists and opinionmakers have come and gone, we see somebody else did take his advice! And it’s arguably a higher-value target for Democrats than Darryl Glenn ever was:

U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman’s office issued a press release Aug. 19 titled “Coffman Statement on Iran Ransom Payment.” This release followed the State Department’s admission that the timing of a $400 million payment to Iran was at least partially related to the release of four American prisoners.

“Worse than lying about this, the Administration has given cash-strapped terrorists around the world a green light to seize Americans,” Coffman said in the release. “They have broken a long standing U.S. policy of not paying for hostages and are now rewarding brutal behavior with cash.”

…The CU News Corps researched Coffman’s statement and found that its assertion that the Obama administration paid “ransom” to Iran is untrue, while the statement that that the payment was contrary to the U.S. government’s “long standing” policy against paying ransom for hostages oversimplifies a complex topic. [Pols emphasis]

That’s right, folks! Rep. Mike Coffman jumped at the chance to mischaracterize this story a la Chuck Plunkett, and today student journalists at the University of Colorado busted Coffman down for it–yet another damning fact check in a terrible few days of earned media. It should be noted that Plunkett was the head of hard political news at the Post for years, a tenure that featured allegations Plunkett edited and even completely deleted stories that weren’t favorable to Coffman. One has to wonder whether, if Plunkett had been in charge of the politics page today instead of back on the editorial board, this fact-check of Coffman would have ever appeared at all.

After all, they fact checked Chuck Plunkett too.

Of course, neither Plunkett nor Coffman invented the characterization of the settlement with Iran over their unfilled pre-revolution arms order as a “ransom.” Republicans across the nation are telling this lie, in most cases completely unchecked and uncorrected. These are the local talking heads you can blame for misinforming the public, but there’s a much larger problem out there. A whole national party manufacturing bullshit consumed without question by millions of Americans.

Safe to say, these CU journalism school kids have a lifetime’s worth of work cut out for them.