Open Mouth, Insert Foot…

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz writes about Ed Schultz putting his foot in it by incorrectly relaying the amount BP donated to Mary Landrieu’s campaign…not once but twice.

“It is unfortunate that in the rush to portray Senator Landrieu as a ‘shill’ for BP, such an egregious error was made, especially at a time when Senator Landrieu was unable to defend herself on air,” says Landrieu spokesman Robert Sawicki. “The right thing to do would have been to correct the record with numbers that truly show how far off his claim really was.”

Sawicki says the network didn’t respond to his follow-up complaint, but “The Ed Show” corrected the mistake Friday after I called MSNBC. Spokesman Jeremy Gaines says the initial number came from a CNN.com post, which itself was quickly corrected, and the second wrong figure was from a watchdog group. He says the “initial plan” was for Schultz to ask Landrieu about the donations during the interview.

I don’t know what’s worse, Schultz’s and his staff getting it wrong twice? Or the fact that they lifted the source material from CNN and a “watchdog group” rather than use their own resources? They are a news network after all…