Irvine Tattler gets it wrong again

Irvine Tattler publisher Stephen Smith has gotten some attention from the OC Register, OC Weekly and KUCI’s OC Show lately due largely to his opposition of anything Agran.  We’ve reported on a number of ocassions the lack of details, full context, mistakes and outrght lies Smith tells on his Tattler site that I’m surprised other OC media outlets still take Smith seriously.  Mayoral candidate Christina Shea continunes to promote Smith’s site for its accuracy — except its not.

Smith’s frequent target, council candidate Todd Gallinger, was the subject of another Tattler post claiming that while Gallinger was a citizen activist/proponent of Measure H (the anti-lobbying initiative in Irvine) that Gallinger didn’t vote for it.  Smith obviouly went to the County RoV to track down Gallinger’s voting record (hope that home address is good enough for you to remove the erroneous post on Gallinger’s residency status in the city Steve). And Smith’s initial findings showed that Gallinger didn’t vote in the June primary.

Todd GallingerThat was news to Gallinger who voted in the early voting available at Irvine City Hall.  There are log books to sign and a paper trail sometimes takes a little longer.  After some digging, Gallinger’s voting record showed he did, in fact, vote in the June primary (I have a PDF file proving this but will not post as it has Todd’s home address and phone number on it). 

Yet even after getting an email demand from Gallinger for Smith to correct the record, the false story on Gallinger’s voting record (as is the story on Gallinger’s residency and a story claiming Gallinger “graphically altered” a Register headline that wasn’t altered) remains up on the Tattler website despite having been proven false.

Smith is a shill for Christina Shea.  How many times do we have to show the OC MSM that his stories are wrong before they take notice his copy isn’t worth the bits and bytes it took to write.  Correct the record Steve…all of it.  And open your site up to comments from the peanut gallery so we can point out mistakes on your site so your readers can see it for themselves.  Leaving up a story proven false is a knowing disregard for the truth. 

We verified in the early voting roster that Mr. Gallinger did vote. The employee working there apparently lost connection with our system on the laptop and issued him an access code manually. The employee believed that by issuing the ballot manually that his voter history would still be recorded, but this is not the case. Mr. Gallinger has been given credit for voting in the June 2008 Primary.

Brett Rowley, Community Outreach Manager, Orange County Registrar of Voters

Here’s what Todd sent Smith:

Dear Mr. Smith:

Once again, you are proved incorrect.  See attached a print out from the Registrar showing that I did indeed vote in the June primary, as I had stated to you.  I demand that you immediately remove your article stating the contrary in its entirety, and publish a correction (in the same size and placement as the original article) in its place.  You must remove your incorrect article in its entirety and publish a correction on the front page of your website, not leave up the false information and publish a correction on a separate page as you have done in the past.  If you fail to take these actions, you will show that your spreading of this information is indeed intentional and I will evaluate legal action to bring a halt to your continued defamation and character assassination.

Todd Gallinger