RMN’s Temple Responds to Obama Gaffe « Denver PR Blog
The Rocky Mountain News publisher John Temple apologized for mistakenly saying Obama had Kenyan citizenship, which led to him being declared “Worst Person in the World” By Keith Olberman on Tuesday.
However, Denver PR Blog raises a good point:
The timeline of what happened is clear, but left unexplained is exactly what process exists that lets staffers rip “facts” from the Internet and package them as verified material.
One of the great questions of modern journalism is how, exactly, these rumors get picked up by what should be responsible news organizations and spread unquestioningly, until they become "fact". Like Hamlet, we are left to ask, "Duped, or playing dumb?"
This seems to point to duped. I often get the sense that reporters are often handed oppo research, and simply pass it on, especially if that contact is a good source — meaning, they give them a lot of good stories, that turn out to be crap. So they don’t much care if they’ve been had, so long as they make the front page, and the editors don’t care if a story is BS, so long as it pleases the right people and gets links.
As evidence for the "playing dumb" explanation, look at "The Most Trusted Name in News", whom are happily pimping the latest fabrications from Corsi, the man behind the Swift Boat Vets. They know the abomination in Obama Nation is Corsi, yet, they give him air time. The justification is that Corsi is a bestselling author, but so are a lot of people who wrote books that aren’t conservative fabrications, and yet don’t get this kind of media backing.
Now, we see that CNN is also asking the tough questions about whether or not Obama is the anti-Christ. Fifty-one percent of CNN’s viewers are Democrats, which means it’s their fault for willingly tuning in to the network to be brow-beaten with crap.
