It did rather look there as if Doug had dashed off that post without reading past the first half dozen lines in Nerd's thread launching post.

The trouble is, that way of dealing with awkward points is the way you can expect the media to do it, all the way to the finishing post.
And even when there's a spasm of even-handed reporting, people are selective in only seeing what supports their pre-existing position, the way Doug did just then.

There will be people who watched that broadcast, and what they'll come away with will just be the bits where the politician of their choice denies that they ever said anything different from what they are saying now. The previous quote will just be erased from their memory even while they watch it. The human mind is a very strange creature. (And that applies just as much to people with a whole range of political viewpoints.)