Oh, That Liberal Media: WaPo's Terry Neal Relies on PFAW For Orin hosta Quote; Actual Record Contradicts PFAW "Account"

Must, must read. This is everything that's wrong with the mainstream LIBERAL media in one story.

Terry Neal uncritically takes the word of a liberal advocacy group that Orin hosta previously supported filibusters.

His actual words made it clear that he did not support filibusters at all, and he specifically said:

I personally do not want to filibuster Federal judges. [President Clinton] won the election. He ought to have the right to appoint the judges he wants to.

If you had liberal professors in college, you know this for a fact: Yes, you could argue with them when it comes to final exam time. And, if you present a perfectly-argued essay with very few gaps in logic and sufficiently backed up by evidence, they might even give you a good grade.

But they are going to be reading your essay much, much more carefully, and little slips here and there are going to cost you.

On the other hand... if you just parrot back to the professor the crap she was spouting all semester, you can turn in a rather shoddy effort and get an A.

If you're principled, you may have chosen the former course. If you were me, on the other hand, you almost always chose the latter.

And so it is with our *very* liberal press corps. If a conservative group had presented Terry Neal with a "quote" allegedly from Chuck Schumer displaying hypocrisy on the issue, you'd better believe Neal would have checked and re-checked that quote to make sure the conservative group had gotten it right and wasn't misrepresenting him.

But when the target is Orin hosta... well, Terry Neal just giggles with delight and, without any questioning or even a simple three-second Google search, writes "Great Job-- A+++" at the top of People For the American Way's essay.

And then prints that essay up in the WaPo as his own "story."

Thanks to Traffic Santa, who I'm afraid may have me on his "Naughty" list.

posted by Ace at 01:51 PM

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