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It’s Not a Banner Day at N.Y. Post

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Times Staff Writer

Hours before Americans learned that Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John F. Kerry had picked North Carolina Sen. John Edwards to be his running mate, the New York Post ran its own exclusive report, beating the competition by a mile.

But it got the story wrong.

“Kerry’s Choice,” blared the front page. “Dem picks Gephardt as VP Candidate.”

The story, which ran without a byline on Page 4, said the tabloid had “learned” that Kerry had decided to pick Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), a veteran congressional leader, because he “could be an asset” to the Massachusetts senator in key states.

Post editors bracketed the article with photographs of Gephardt and his family, and also featured a box listing the reasons he had been selected.

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News of the Post’s gaffe began spreading soon after NBC and other media outlets broke into their broadcasts about 7:30 a.m. to announce that Kerry had picked Edwards. On CNN, news anchors gleefully noted that the Post was owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox News cable network.

But the paper’s embarrassment had just begun.

By 9 a.m., the top of the Post’s website was running contradictory stories, one saying Gephardt had been selected and another -- credited to wire service reports -- indicating that Edwards would be the choice. Post editors removed the incorrect story several minutes later.

Editors could not remove more than 700,000 copies of the Post’s daily home and street edition, which had been distributed throughout New York City.

Some newsstands reported a brisk business throughout the day from customers who were snapping up copies. “They think it will be worth something some day, maybe more than they paid for it,” said Midtown newsstand operator Pater Patel. He said all 50 of his copies were gone by noon, which was unusual.

By late afternoon, copies were also being sold on EBay. One seller, who was asking $7 for the 25-cent newspaper, billed it as a collector’s item, “one of the greatest newspaper flubs in history.”

The Post’s miscue was reminiscent of the 1948 Chicago Daily Tribune headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman,” which reported incorrectly that Republican New York Gov. Thomas Dewey had defeated Democrat Harry S. Truman for the presidency.

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And it marked the second time in less than a year that the Post had gotten a big story wrong. In October, the tabloid ran an editorial lamenting the New York Yankees’ loss in the American League championship series to the Boston Red Sox, when the home team had actually beaten Boston.

Post officials issued a statement Tuesday saying that Editor Col Allan had decided to run the Gephardt story “after the Post received information it believed to be correct.” Allan added, “We unreservedly apologize to our readers for the mistake.”

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