NYT Takes Heat Over Blumenthal Video

When the New York Times ran its Richard Blumenthal story yesterday, it included a 2008 video of him speaking in which he claims to have served "in Vietnam." Today, a longer version of the same video has emerged that shows Blumenthal saying at the beginning of the speech that he "served during the Vietnam era," reports AP. The Times has been taking heat today from Media Matters and others for not airing the full video, but the newspaper says it's a moot point.

"The video doesn't change our story," says the paper in a statement—that story being that Blumenthal repeatedly misled about his military service. But, objects Greg Sargent at Plum Line, "the 2008 speech is by far the single most damning piece of evidence." The longer version "raises at least the possibility that he didn't intend to mislead later on." Either way, why the shorter version? "It seems obvious that when dealing with a story this explosive, you would want to err on the side of more context, rather than less." (More Richard Blumenthal stories.)