polifrog
While researching
Carter Wrenn and Bernie Reeves Disrespecting Privacy: MBA Polifrog noted that the
newsoberver.com (blog) post on Randall's MBA was posted only 2 hours after
Carter Wrenn broke the story and had a surprising amount of researched information considering the late hour. Polifrog set it aside as it was not germane to post at the time.
This post intends to carry that neglected observation forward.
In a previous post
Bernie Reeves and His Fickle Friends in the Press Polifrog asserted that Bernie Reeves holds an advantage in the press over Bill Randall. Some have questioned,though, Polifrog's claim that such an advantage exists as no concrete link was provided.
Although, it seems an obvious assumption such links exist, as:
Networking, making friends, owing favors and having favors owed in return are all steps in a dance when doing business and Reeves has been a part of that dance for quite some time.
demonstrable proof is of a higher threshold and Polifrog believes it should be met.
Proof of this connection can be found in the Bernie Reeves/Bill Randall MBA drama of the last couple of days in which Bernie Reeves accused Bill Randall of falsely claiming an MBA.
The first publication of this accusation seems to be Carter Wrenn's
Does He Or Doesn't He? at
8:03PM Wednesday. One would think that this sort of information would have been broken on the Bernie Reeves campaign website. It was not; the Bernie Reeves campaign website
references Wrenn's attack on Bill Randall and not the other way around. Carter Wrenn posted the attack at both talkingpolitics.com and at The Reeves Campaign website.
The next publication of the Randall MBA attack came just 2 hours later at
10:04PM Wednesday at the
NewsObsever.com (blogs) and was penned by mbieseck. The same piece was then officially published again seven hours later by Staff Writer Michael Biesecker at
newsobserver.com 4:57AM Thursday Morning, presumably the same person.
According to Biesecker:
Wednesday evening, Reeves' campaign provided a copy of e-mailed reply from the clearinghouse saying that Randall had been enrolled at National-Louis, which offers courses over the Internet, from 2004 to 2006, but that he did not earn a degree.
...
Reached by a reporter, Randall said any suggestion he did not earn an MBA is "ridiculous."
...
A spokeswoman for National-Louis reached by Dome late Wednesday said she could not immediately confirm whether or not Randall earned a degree at the institution. She said a definitive check of the university's records would be completed Thursday.
Are we to believe that in the two hours (8PM to 10PM) between Carter Wrenn's attack on Randall and the newsobserver.com Biesecker piece that a newsobserver.com reporter contacted Bill Randall and a National-Louis spokesman? At that late hour? Mind you, school administration officials or people of authority are unlikely to work past 5:00 and with the timezone changes taken into account, the latest National-Louis University could likely have been contacted by the reporter was 6:00pm eastern time. That would have been 2 hours prior to Carter Wrenn's breaking of the Randall MBA story via talkingpolitics.com.
Unless Biesecker is prescient, how did he know to call National-Louis University prior to Wrenn's Randall MBA attack?
Could it be that the only conclusion is collusion, that the newsobserver.com and the Bernie Reeves campaign conspired to attack Bill Randall by sharing information prior to the publishing of multiple articles in the late hours of Wednesday and the small hours of Thursday in an effort to increase the effectiveness of the attack?
It certainly seems likely.
The posting of essentially the same article twice in the newsoberver.com under different locations within the site, once at talkingpolitics.com, and once at the Bernie Reeves Campaign website undoubtedly makes an impression on google and would clearly spread the word more effectively true or not.
Polifrog hopes to be proven wrong and be able to write as
Bernie Reeves recently wrote in reference to his failed Randall MBA attack:
...it was a fair question...
[Added] Consider the influence of a man willing to collude with the power of media. Then imagine the governance of the same man as a seated congressman able to collude with government.
As an aside, Polifrog called National-Lewis University this afternoon during the 4:00 hour to experience their policy toward questions posed to the University. The University's policy is not to answer questions verbally and required Polifrog to submit the question via e-mail, presumably for clarity and to have a written record. This is time consuming, and as of the 9:00 hour Polifrog has yet to receive a reply.
Edited for clarity.
out
