On Monday, we shared a 6,000 word transcript of a conference call between church camp smores-maker turned US Senator James Lankford and several prominent executives with local manufacturing firms.
When I was working on the post, I wasn't exactly sure which direction to go with the ever important headline. The greedy online publisher in me wanted to go with an extremely clickable, Facebook Like generating "Even James Lankford is nervous about Trump," but that seemed misleading.
Sure, Lankford did admit he was a nervous about Trump's first state dinner, but when read in relation to everything else (a.k.a context), the quote didn't seem all that scandalous. As a result, I went with the more generalized, less juicy, and much more accurate "James Lankford had a nice conference call with local business executives."
Anyway, I bring this up because News 9 picked up on our story and filed a report on last night's broadcast. They even name-dropped us! Check out the angle they went with:
Sen. Lankford Worries Over Trump In Private Meeting
Senator James Lankford (R) told a group of Oklahoma business leaders he's nervous about President-Elect Donald Trump, according to a leaked transcript of a conference-call meeting held last week.
The transcript was leaked to the online tabloid The Lost Ogle and was later confirmed by Lankford’s office. On the call were prominent Oklahoma business executives, including those from large manufacturing companies like M-D Building Products, KimRay and Jasco Building.
Well look at that! Move over "obscure local social blog!" We're an "online tabloid"... that apparently has higher journalistic ethics than the local TV news establishment. Hooray for us!
Seriously, sit down, get comfortable, and go read the full transcript. It's not nearly as sensational as News 9 makes it sound. If anything, the vibe I got was that Lankford is eager to work with Trump, and has high hopes that the Republican-led congress will be able to work with the President-elect to unleash the GOP establishment agenda on the rest of the country.
James Lankford wasn't very happy that News 9 took his quote out of context. He pulled a page from the Trump handbook and sent the following tweet late last night:
He went the disappointed angle? That's weak. At the next state dinner, James Lankford should ask Trump for some pointers on how to show anti-media Twitter rage.
You may notice Lankford's tweet only got seven RT's. One of them was from us:
I'll let you know if or when our Senator gets back to me. In the meantime, I'm going to get back to work on our big exclusive story for Monday. Let's just say there's a pretty decent chance Dean Blevins was impregnated by bat child.
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