Student journalism WIN

Last week, The College of New Jersey’s student paper, The
Perspective, published an interview with Mike
Huckabee, in which the former Governor of Arkansas said some colourful things about same-sex
marriage.

The article, written by the paper’s editor, quoted
Huckabee as saying: “You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral
pattern that is against the ideal….That would be like saying, well, there are a
lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those
who want to use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we
should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should
accommodate them.”

Needless to say, Huckabee was less than thrilled with the
way he was portrayed. He responded on his website: “The young college student
hopefully will find a career other than journalism.”

I suspect many beg to differ, including the Associated
Press, MSNBC and The Washington Post, who all picked up the story.

The Huffington Post chronicled the back-and-forth between
The Perspective and Huckabee, and posted an audio file and transcript of the
interview in question.

Though Huckabee uses a lot of strong words, it’s
important to note—as The Perspective did—that nowhere did he state that he was
misquoted, or that there was anything factually incorrect with the piece. There
seems to be a lot of that going around lately.

And the moral of this story is: Always, always, always,
always record your interviews.