Sometimes it almost seems like one of the requirements for a high-placed job in corporate media is an inability to learn from experience. Take the front page of USA Today (7/22/10)–the “cover story” is about Shirley Sherrod (FAIR Blog, 7/21/10), whose ordeal is blamed in part on “conservative blogger” Andrew Breitbart taking advantage of “a media culture in which half-truths can spread like a virus online, to be instantly and endlessly chewed over on cable TV.”
And right next to this piece, the paper’s lead story is about voters being registered at welfare offices. It concludes with a right-wing spin insinuating that registering poor people to vote is a form of electoral fraud:
Jason Torchinsky, a former Justice Department lawyer in the Bush administration, says liberal groups want welfare offices to replace the work of ACORN, a coalition of anti-poverty groups that disbanded this year after allegations of voter fraud.
“With the demise of ACORN, the left needs somebody to pick up that function,” he says.
Except, of course, ACORN didn’t disband after allegations of voter fraud; it disbanded after that same Andrew Breitbart who smeared Shirley Sherrod put out an equally fraudulent video that falsely portrayed the group as giving professional counseling to a guy dressed like Superfly–you know, one of those half-truths that spread like a virus online and wad instantly and endlessly chewed over on cable TV…and has clearly not yet been spit out by USA Today.
Does anyone buy USA Today? Frankly, the only time I see the paper is in the airport…left behind in the garbage.
I also see USA today in airports, but I also see it left at the door of 3 star hotels. I expect an awful lot of their reported circulation comes from counting these freebies, probably heavily discounted to the hotels.
That kind of distribution is certain to have positive effects. Travelers will read it under the impression that it’s a real newspaper, and be more likely to actually throw their money away on it in the future.
as if quoting ANYBODY from the hopelessly partisan and corrupt bush doj is worth doing in the first place…
Lies, lies, lies, spinning them, repeating them over and over, and finally “clarifying them” when nothing else works…… pundits RULE!!!!! and journalists are just lazy idiots.
USA TODAY is what it looks like, a Comic Book.
Just as factual, but not very funny.
~John L.