Can you handle the truth?

At the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, we have by necessity developed a pretty thick skin. Daily criticism rolls off our backs that would be withering were we to take it personally.

But when a candidate for political office calls into question the veracity of our reporting, it is incumbent upon us to set the record straight.

No matter what state House hopeful Mark Ewing would have you believe, he did in fact — in a public setting — say that the state should consider moves to stop providing education to “children that have a hard time making their wheelchair move.”

We have the digital audio file of the debate. We got it from the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce. You can listen to the entire debate on that organization’s website. We also will post the relevant portion of the debate with this editorial online at Frontiersman.com.

Ewing, in comments he made Friday on talk radio, would have you believe that what he said was that the children “can’t even figure out how to make their wheelchair work.”

Truth is, he did not say that. The audio of the debate proves our reporting was correct and Ewing is now backpedaling, trying to rewrite the record.

How his revision makes the quote any better we will leave to Ewing to explain. He has tried to explain it on his campaign Facebook page and to talk radio host Dave Stieren, whose program Friday contained the following exchange:

Stieren: “Was that your first response to the education question or did the Frontiersman delete your initial response?”

Ewing: “Actually, you know, that was a response that isn’t politically correct. But I’m going to use a quote from Jack Nicholson and that is, ‘most people can’t handle the truth.’”

In the interest of accuracy, we note here that Ewing misquoted the illustrious Nicholson as well.

But Ewing is correct in the intent of his mangled quote. It’s true — some people can’t handle the truth. Even, or perhaps especially, when it is a truth about them.

Seemingly, it would have been better for Ewing — when confronted with his publicly stated views on special education funding — to simply admit to what he said. That would have cleared the way for him to explain in more detail, or backtrack. It’s not a crime to simply tell voters, “You know what? That was a boneheaded thing to say, and I’m sorry.”

Why would we throw into this debate now? This isn’t about Ewing personally or as a candidate. It’s about credibility — namely ours. Our greatest asset is our good name; our credibility. When you read what we print, you trust us to get it right, and for the most part, we hit that mark. Also included in the notion of credibility is accountability. When we do get it wrong, we tell you about it, and we correct all of our errors online and in print.

In this case, Ewing publically questioned our credibility in an attempt to avoid responsibility for words he said. He challenged us publically to correct the record. But based on the audio from that debate, the record stands as written. Our response here is grounded in the most basic of journalistic values — the truth.