Politico Fails to Fact-check Carnahan’s Coffin Con. [UPDATED.]

[UPDATE: via Glenn Reynolds I see that Politico has updated the story, and that it was even worse before I noticed it.  I’m making corrections.]

Let us start by watching what happened SUNDAY. This is via Gateway Pundit – who, by the way, was there and who was a spokesman:

Got it? Low-key prayer vigil, coffin brought in for staged funeral of Constitution [future victims of abortion.  See, this is how you do it, Politico – ML], old people crying, coffin then removed. Now let’s see how Politico referenced it:

A coffin was placed on a Missouri Democrat’s lawn, another in a string of incidents against lawmakers after their vote Sunday on a health care overhaul.

Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.) had a coffin placed “near his home,” a spokesman said Wednesday evening.

The coffin was from a prayer vigil.

…and then they went on to equate this with (alleged) incidents or threats of physical violence. Without bothering to check, of course.

Guys? Unquestionably and uncritically reprinting Democratic party press releases like this is not going to be a viable business model, come January 2011. Russ Carnahan and his people can’t help themselves – in more ways than one – but you over at the Politico can.

Moe Lane

PS: I’ll feel obligated to disavow acts of political violence when credible evidence appears that an organization that I belong to organized, initiated, or willfully incited one. Until then, I recommend that people wanting me to do that just save their screeds to their hard drive, preferably in a subfolder of the folder that they have for all those drawings of Sarah Palin being beaten.

Crossposted to RedState.

11 thoughts on “Politico Fails to Fact-check Carnahan’s Coffin Con. [UPDATED.]”

  1. Just a note, Moe, that even the “The coffin was from a prayer vigil” was not in the original report by Politico. That sentence was added in their first unidentified update.

  2. “I’ll feel obligated to disavow acts of political violence when credible evidence appears that an organization that I belong to organized, initiated, or willfully incited one. ”

    Hear, hear!

  3. ‘Reporter’ fellates Democrats, swallows press release, regurgitates it as ‘news’ …

  4. The Politico can’t help itself either; it’s a subsidiary of the DNC through several shell orgs. The real story here is that they’re walking back the story.

  5. I’m pretty sure at some point I thought of Politico as pretty on-the-level.

    Oh well, another media outlet I don’t need to pay attention to. Jeez, I should really keep a clearly smaller list of ones that I DO need to pay attention do.

  6. Unquestionably and uncritically reprinting Democratic party press releases like this is not going to be a viable business model, come January 2011

    I dunno…its unviability is more a reflection of tough MSM times than common sense. My recall is that, post January 1995, Dick Gephardt was still the go-to guy in Congress for the media stenographers.

    Cordially…

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