Monday, September 14, 2009

Don't Blame Us, Blame the Newspaper We Copied It Out Of   [Mark Steyn]

The USS Neverdock notices an emerging global trend: newspapers suckered by the Washington Post and the New York Times. Down under, the Sydney Morning Herald has retracted its "original" "report" of the Van Jones resignation:

A week ago, the Herald ran a story which, in its essence, was not true. The paper did not know this. It was the unwitting victim of a distortion created at The Washington Post, which produced the original story.

This follows the Irish Times' recent retraction of a story it cut-and-pasted from the New York Times.

Of course, neither the Sydney Morning Herald nor the Irish Times are "unwitting victims" of the Washington Post and New York Times. It's their choice to copy blindly any slab of hooey appearing in the Post and Times that happens to suit their prejudices without checking it for themselves. As the Neverdock points out, if you can't do as well as some blogger using Google, maybe you shouldn't be in the news business.

Indeed, given what Jonah calls the "Pravdaesque" coverage of the Acorn/Census Bureau split, it seems undeniable that many U.S. media outlets have decided there's a lucrative niche market in providing news to people who'd prefer to be kept in the dark. It's easy to see why, say, a liberal schoolteacher in Westchester County would rather not have her illusions discombobulated. Less easy to see why so many other "reporters" around the world who repeat the Times/Post line as dutifully as believers reciting the Koran should be so eager to join the club.

09/14 11:57 AMShare