Who will call them on it?
Will you?
TPM Reader MW just sent us in this email …
While you and the Hill report that Foley’s IM’s were given to ABC by a GOP aid, Newt G was reported on NPR last night saying that it is a Democrat election gambit and the assertion was not challenged in the report. Again last night on CNN they reported Hastert’s comments that the Dems did it and on NBC’s Today this morning, the same unchallenged reporting of GOP assertions were made. Eventually it will become the “truth” that the Dems did it unless the mainstream media do real reporting.
This kind of stuff really irritates me.
On CNN and in the Washington Post yesterday, reporters duly noted that the Republicans who are parrotting this argument do so with no evidence and that there’s no evidence to back it up.
But this is insufficient.
Every news organization that is aggressively reporting this story knows in basic outlines who the ultimate sources of these IMs were and how they made their way into the hands of the media. So they know not only that there is ‘no evidence’ for the GOP line but that it is actually false. Given that the Republicans who are spouting this line make no effort even to offer evidence, I think it is a fair conclusion that not only is the claim false but that these professional bamboozlers like Gingrich know it’s false.
In other words, they’re lying. And the news organizations publishing what they say know they’re lying.
Saying there’s ‘no evidence’ doesn’t cut.
