PBS News Hour does the right thing, corrects the record about Idaho’s Phil McGrane

After being called out by dozens of Idaho residents and journalists, PBS News Hour, which had classified Idaho Secretary of State-elect Phil McGrane as “fueling doubts” about election results, reclassified McGrane as an “election defender.”

It took a while and a little effort to correct the record, but it’s never too late to do the right thing.

“Following alerts from our audience and others, the PBS NewsHour has decided to delete a tweet we posted about Idaho Secretary of State-elect Phil McGrane,” reporter Lisa Desjardins wrote in an article posted Sunday morning. “The NewsHour has moved McGrane from the category ‘fuels doubts’ to ‘election defender.’”

When McGrane interviewed with the Idaho Statesman editorial board earlier this year, he gave the best answer to the question about election integrity.

“One of the biggest things I find frustrating is the narratives that are going on nationally,” McGrane said. “So it’s either … the narrative that the election was stolen, there’s rampant voter fraud on one end, or equally frustrating can be the narrative that there is absolutely no voter fraud, and no examples of it. Neither of those are true.”

That’s the right answer, and it’s the most honest answer we heard throughout the election.

McGrane was speaking with us during the Republican primary election, in which he defeated true election deniers Dorothy Moon and Mary Souza. Moon once said on the House floor to debate a voter restriction measure that she had “heard” that Canadians were coming across the border to vote in Idaho elections. During a televised debate, both she and Souza said they did not think Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election. McGrane said Biden won legitimately.

It may not seem like it, but that was a risky move on McGrane’s part, to speak the truth just days before a closed Republican primary in a state where nearly one-third of Idahoans believe the lie that Donald Trump won the election, according to Idaho Statesman polling released last week.

Indeed, McGrane barely won the primary.

Moon received 109,637 votes, just 4,000 votes shy of McGrane. Souza received 41,057 votes.

As I wrote at the time, Idaho was one Mary Souza news conference away from Dorothy Moon being elected secretary of state.

Throughout the election, McGrane was the voice of reason when it came to elections and election integrity.

Which makes sense, since the self-described “elections nerd” has been doing elections work nearly his entire career.

He’s been doing it since 2005, when he was hired by Ada County to count punch cards and recruit poll workers. He’s led the state’s largest county election office since being elected Ada County clerk in 2018. Before that, he was chief deputy clerk.

So it was odd — and disappointing — when PBS News Hour tweeted, “Republican Phil McGrane, who has fueled doubts about the results of the 2020 presidential election, will become Idaho’s next secretary of state, The Associated Press reports.”

Dozens, if not hundreds, of people, including local journalists — myself included — rushed to call out the bad tweet, pointing out that McGrane isn’t an election denier.

Unfortunately, PBS News Hour doubled down, essentially telling everyone here in Idaho that they looked into the matter and found that McGrane’s comments during the debate “left room for fueling doubt.”

During our interview, which is posted in its entirety on our website, we asked him point blank, “Do you think that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election?”

McGrane answered quickly and simply, “Yes.”

But it appears that someone at PBS News Hour simply had a preconceived notion that the guy from the reddest state in the nation must be an election denier, or at least is “fueling doubts” about the election.

Framing it that way completely distorted the truth, and it was disappointing that instead of correcting the record and saying, “Oops, we messed up there” — especially in the face of dozens upon dozens of Idaho journalists and residents, the ones who really know the truth — PBS News Hour chose to say, “We think we know better than you.”

Fortunately, PBS News Hour reassessed, did the right thing, corrected the record and restored the trust so many of us have had in them.