When Will Politico's Jonathan Martin Acknowledge His Lie?

Several days ago we here at Big Journalism politely requested for Politico’s Jonathan Martin to retract this sensationally false statement:

In his piece today entitled “Sarah Palin is wreaking havoc on the campaign trail, GOP sources say,” Politico’s Jonathan Martin (who was tasked with the Republican Party beat for the website for the 2008 elections) falsely claims Sarah Palin backed out of a scheduled interview with talk-radio host Mark Levin:

According to a source familiar with the situation, she backed out of planned interviews with conservative talk-show hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin the morning she was scheduled to talk to them.

Levin contested this claim on his facebook page, and has asked Politico to retract this statement:

This is a flat out lie. Sarah Palin never backed out of any interview with me. Period. And John Martin, the reporter, never contacted me to ask me directly. I insist on a retraction.

Dan Riehl again reminded Mr. Martin of his responsibility to his journalistic ethic again in this space.

Dana followed up on Twitter and reminded Mr. Martin of his responsibility to report the facts accurately:

Mr. Martin has done nothing but in response except to antagonize the Palin camp on Twitter (Mansour is head of Palin’s PAC):

One would think that after his smear campaign against Joe the Plumber, Mr Martin would want to earn back a decent reputation as a man of the facts, but so far we’ve seen nothing from Martin to indicate such.

He’s happy to let his sloppy and irresponsible reporting stand. We assume he thinks he’s doing it to take a stand against who he believes to be his ideological opponents, but such a stance betrays the flaw in the fabric of the leftist religion: so devoted it seems Martin is to attacking the right that he’s allowed it to eclipse his job performance. Any other journalist in their right mind would not want a glaring mistake to taint their work and would be eager to change it; Martin won’t because he (and we’re assuming because his failure to address it invites assumption) is now conditioned to think that the act of making his piece stronger and accurate would be defeat.

To the contrary.

The fact that he steadfastly allows a write-up widely thought to be shoddy journalism to stand uncorrected, that he would devalue himself as a way to strike out against those with whom he differs politically, is a defeat – but only his.

We respectfully request a retraction, Mr. Martin, and will be updating as to your progress of making it happen. It’s what we do best.

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