At this point, this is a he-said, she-said controversy. But if the retired major general’s niece that is quoted in this blog post is accurate, then ABC News – usually pretty good for a mainstream news organization — dropped the ball on a report on soldiers’ views of the campaign in an egregious manner.

This is the report by Martha Raddatz of ABC News, asking soldiers who they prefer in the presidential race, at that point between McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Obama. Soldiers Slate, Keller, Loto and Lindsesdt mention their preference for Obama. A Sgt. Logan mentions his preference for Hillary. No soldier is quoted as saying he or she prefers McCain.

I remember this story raising some eyebrows at the time for a couple of reasons. No soldier expressed a preference for McCain? Wouldn’t one expect to find one sooner or later if the sample was large enough? And Raddatz’ report didn’t give any sense of how many soldiers she spoke to, or whether those answers were proportional…

The account from the retired major general: “Katelyn and her Captain stood directly behind Raddatz as she queried GI’s walking past. They kept count of the GI’s and you should remember these numbers. She asked 60 GI’s who they planned to vote for in November. 54 said John McCain, 4 for Obama and 2 for Hillary.”

Again, if accurate… egregious.

UPDATE: On Snopes.com, an e-mail from Raddatz says she didn’t speak to more than a dozen service members. Snopes said the aired television segment featured three pro-Obama troops, two pro-Hillary, and one pro-McCain.

Snopes mentions critics’ charge that “by identifying the report with titles such as “Whom Are Our Troops Endorsing?” and “Surprising Political Endorsements by U.S. Troops,” ABC News presented the piece as being a survey of American troops’ presidential preferences while offering viewers a distinctly skewed perspective of those preferences.” However many soldiers Raddatz spoke to, I think that’s a fair criticism.