Today if your sole sources of news are traditional, “mainstream” outlets like the big television networks (ABC, NBC, CBS), big newspapers (NYT, WaPo, LA Times) or smaller papers dependent on wire services like AP and Reuters (almost all of them) you are almost certainly simultaneously uninformed and misinformed.
“Uninformed” because there are important news stories these dinosaurs refuse to touch while their team is running Congress and the White House because they don’t fit the preferred narrative. Stories like Climate-gate, the Black Panther voter intimidation scandal, the numerous ACORN scandals and numerous others embarrassments for the Obama-Reid-Pelosi juggernaut were simply ignored until it was no longer possible to do so.
Last September readers whose sole source of news is the New York Times must have been utterly bewildered to learn of the resignation of Mr. Obama’s special green jobs “czar” Van Jones. Controversy about Jones past statements and associations had been roiling for weeks, but NYT readers had heard absolutely nothing of it.
“Misinformed” because much of what these entities do report is twisted or just plain wrong. Often outrageously so. Today’s case in point . . .
Numerous news cites are repeating, as fact, an assertion by CBS News that Arizona Republican Senator John Kyl is proposing that we repeal the 14th Amendment. Given that the 14th Amendment was a milestone post-slavery civil rights remedy drafted in the aftermath of the Civil War, it’s an incendiary accusation.
It’s also false.
Specifically, a reporter named Jimmy So at CBS’s “Face the Nation” sub-site declared that Sen. Kyl “supports repeal of the 14th Amendment.” In the last few minutes, the copy has been revised and the following note has been added to the very bottom of the story:
EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier edit of this story suggested that Sen. Kyl supported repealing the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship. While the senator has proposed hearings on the Constitution’s guarantees on citizenship and what he terms a “reward” for parents who are in the country illegally, Kyl’s communications director Andrew Wilder said that “he did not call for the ‘repeal’ of the 14th Amendment.”
The truth is, Sen. Kyl and a number of other lawmakers of both parties are considering a proposal to clarify the language of one sentence of Section 1 of the 14th amendment–the fuzzy language that currently makes it possible for illegal aliens to slip into the country to have their babies and thereby gain the privileges of citizenship for an entire family.
Of course this buried retraction comes too late. The lie has already traveled around the world several times before the truth can get its pants on. The lie is an everlasting part of the internet’s searchable history.
Of course, if bloggers like Daniel Foster over at NRO didn’t exist to call CBS on shameless smears like this, So’s story would have never been corrected.
This, by the way, is why the mainstream media despises the blogosphere. Accountability sucks.