Oh, Amy … you’re not looking all that good

EDIT-1stADD: It turns out this was not the final time we talked about Amy Chozick. Perhaps the third time will be the charm? We hope so.

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Hopefully, this will be the final time we talk about Wall Street Journal reporter Amy Chozick. You may remember her previous appearance on these pages, when she wrote a story insinuating that Barack Obama is too thin to be president.

In it, she quoted a poster in Yahoo Message Boards who said that Obama is just too darned skinny:

“I won’t vote for any beanpole guy,” another Clinton supporter wrote last week on a Yahoo politics message board.

Well, there’s another problem. You see, journalists aren’t supposed to direct the discussion in a specific direction just to come up with a story angle. And yet, scooped up from the cache over at Google, we have this discussion dating from mid-July:

amychozick: Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his “no excess body fat”? Please let me know. Thanks!

That led to this response:

onlinebeerbellygirl: Yes I think He is to skinny to be President.Hillary has a potbelly and chuckybutt I’d of Voted for Her.I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.

And what does Amy have to say about that? She thinks it’s kewl:

amychozick: Love your response and your username (onlinebeerbellygirl). Would you mind shooting me an email so I can ask you a few more quesitons? My email is amy.chozick@gmail.com. Thanks so much!

-Amy

At the very least, Ms. Chozick should have identified herself up front as a political reporter for the Wall Street Journal when she posted on Yahoo Message Boards. It’s not like she’s on the level of one of the Sunday morning talking heads. She may be well-known in political circles inside Wonderland On The Potomac, but the Wall Street Journal isn’t exactly a general-interest publication.

I asked Ms. Chozick several questions in an e-mail this morning, among them:

• When you posted on a Yahoo Groups forum looking for people who think Barack Obama is “too thin to be president” and are ‘having a hard time relating to him and his ‘no excess body fat,’” why did you not publicly identify yourself up front as a Wall Street Journal reporter working on a story?
• Do you consider that lack of self-identification to be ethically sound behavior for a working reporter under those circumstances?
• Why did you initiate discussion on that topic where none existed before you brought it up?
• Do you consider initiating that discussion on that topic where none existed to be ethically-sound behavior for a working reporter?

To her credit, Chozick offered up a reply:

Hi Foster,
It is a fair question. Thanks for bringing it up. I talk to voters all over the country (I have been on the road, first with the Clinton campaign, and now with the Obama campaign) for over eight months now. I posed the question on lots of message board and via email and via word of mouth and interviews and gauged what kind of response I got. I also quote a couple governors, a Brookings Institute historian and a former chief of staff to President Clinton.
Best, Amy

I am very distinctly reminded of a quote used in the mid-1990s TV series Babylon 5 (the episode “Point Of No Return,” for the curious):

Unfortunately, while all answers are replies, not all replies are answers.

And, oh-by-the-way, this morning the “amychozick” Yahoo Message Boards profile was allegedly held by somebody named “Sara Mullins.” I’m not sure who that is, but I’m betting she looks just like Amy Chozick. I sent that e-mail to Chozick at noon EDT straight up today and the only question I asked that I didn’t list above was this one, third in a series of five:

• Who is “Sara Mullins?”

Suddenly “Sara Mullins” became “Amy Chozick” on the Yahoo profile page — and Chozick didn’t address the matter of who “Sara Mullins” actually is when she replied to my e-mail.

No More Mr. Nice Guy has been looking into this, as well. Commenter “Q the Enchanter” at Grasping Reality With Both Hands also noticed the Mullins/Chozick mystery.