Halperin’s Team Continues To Report Right Wing Smears as News

In The Way to Win ABC News political director Mark Halperin and John Harris compare Drudge to Walter Cronkite. They describe how Drudge posts things which are unsubstantiated and, since it is posted on Drudge, it becomes news which is picked up by the mainstream media. By having such items which he posts be reported by the mainstream media, Drudge has the influence of Walter Cronkite without the integrity.

If Halperin was a true journalist, the obvious response to this would be to pass on the word at ABC that Drudge is not a reliable source. Instead, despite accurately describing how misinformation is spread by Drudge, Halperin reliably spreads what Drudge posts. Not surprisingly, it appears that ABC News is the first to post tonight’s smears on Al Gore (discussed in more detail in this earlier post.) Of course they don’t mention that Drudge was greatly responsible for spreading the claims of this pseudo-research organization which has been shown to have strong Republican ties. I can only imagine how they’ll repeat all the right wing talking points in The Note.

2 Comments

  1. 1
    Kman says:

    So….what was published is false?

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    See previous post. This is quite shoddy journalism. They start quoting attacks from the “Tennessee Center for Policy Research” as if it is a legitimate source thanks to this being publicized by Drudge. Halperin allows Drudge to set their news agenda.

    Fortunately the story has grown over night and has some of the facts. If people go on to the second page it will show that this is “an obscure conservative think tank.” At least that’s better than the early coverage, especially in the more outright conservative media, which tries to pass this off as a nonpartisan research group. The current ABC story is better than the initial reports on this, but the partisan nature of the attacks should be revealed from the beginning if they are going to repeat this stuff.

    Besides being misleading in not immediately disclosing the fact that this is a partisan attack from a group tied to the energy industry, not a report from a real think tank, the story repeats the charges of hypocrisy when there’s no validiy to it. Gore is doing exactly what he promotes as described in the previous post. He has taken concrete efforts to decrease his energy use, and is purchasing carbon offsets to compensate for the energy he does use.

    The attackers misrepresent what Gore advocates and then accuse him of hypocrisy for not following their false descriptions of what Gore advocates. There’s no legitimate story in charging someone with hypocrisy for not doing what they never advocated in the first place.

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