Sometimes I get a story that is sensational, but something about it is very wrong. I can't quite place it, but a story will sometimes feel off. So I don't report it.
Many times the story is dead on and then I report on it, other times, it's completely wrong.
This is one of those stories that has blown up in the face of liberal blog Think Progress:
CORRECTION: As a blog that strives to maintain credibility and transparency, we would like to explain our mistake. When we were alerted to the tip that Adm. Ziemer gave a similar speech in 1996, We searched LexisNexis and McCain’s campaign site for whether the senator used the disputed phrases before that time. We did not find anything. After we published the post, the McCain campaign contacted us and pointed to a speech given by the senator in 1995, which appears on McCain’s Senate site. As soon as we were alerted to the error, we rushed to publish a correction. Once again, we regret the error, and we apologize for it.
So, because they couldn't find it in two places, it must be true! If you're going to accuse a Presidential candidate of plagiarism, regardless of political party, you'd better make damned sure you're right. Otherwise you look like you're just playing partisan politics.
And now, they are taking a beating for it from their readers:
March 28th, 2008 at 11:07 am
To simplify the apology for those on the fourm: “We, at Think Progress, totally screwed up and can never be trusted again because we got caught in a lie. We let our complete and utter hatred of anyone who is not a far left, socialist/Communist loon, cloud what little reason that we had in the first place. It is unfortunate that our blind idealogical rage and willingness to fabricate things was exposed here. We hope that the next time that we rush to slander a conservative without checking our facts, that we can get away with it. We also know that the truth doesn’t matter in the least to the vast majority of impotent, “victimized” lemmings that read and post on our site, so McCain if you are waiting for apologies from all the deranged morons that automatically assumed that this story was true, don’t hold your breath, old man.” I hope that clarifies this “apology” for everyone
Sometimes my instincts are dead on. :)
Travis
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