Politics

Sharron Angle accuses Sen. Harry Reid of pressuring paper to change headline

Alex Pappas Political Reporter
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GOP candidate Sharron Angle on Wednesday accused Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of pressuring the Las Vegas Sun to change a headline that said she had won the only debate in the race for the Nevada Senate seat.

Angle, in a fundraising pitch to supporters, said Reid was “calling in favors from the Las Vegas Sun” to change the headline and alleges that the change came after a meeting between Reid and the paper. The story in question is an analysis of the debate written by political columnist Jon Ralston.

“Right after Reid’s debate defeat he went to visit the liberal Las Vegas Sun newspaper,” Angle says in the fundraising email. “They’ve previously endorsed him and have been largely serving as the mouthpiece of the Reid campaign for well over a year. The night of the debate they had an article headlined ‘Jon Ralston notes how Reid lost the debate to Angle.’ After the meeting with Reid, however, the Sun changed it’s headline to ‘Thoughts on the Reid-Angle debate’.”

A rival Nevada paper, The Las Vegas Review Journal, questioned the headline change in a Sunday column.

Ralston, a non-staff columnist for the paper, said in an email that he has “no knowledge of Reid going there. Not a word of my column was changed. I don’t know why the headline was changed.”

The meeting Angle references, according to The Las Vegas Review Journal, is apparently from a post-debate interview Reid did with the Sun.

“So, the Sun interviewed Reid for a Saturday story that might as well been a Reid campaign press release for all the unchallenged assertions made by Reid,” the paper’s publisher, Sherman Frederick, wrote. He went on to ask Ralston to explain why the headline was changed after publication in both the print and online editions of his column.

Angle’s campaign did not respond to a request asking for more information on the allegation. Reid’s campaign also has not responded.