The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported on Sunday that Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) had claimed that the United States is the greatest threat to peace in the world:
American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran, U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said to a crowd of more than 200 in North Miami Saturday afternoon.
The Sun-Sentinel never provided a direct quote of Murtha, but the story was still featured on the Drudge Report and Murtha immediately came under attack from conservative pundits:
Bill O’Reilly, Fox News, 6/26:
Murtha has lost all perspective and did months ago, but his message is firmly entrenched in America’s far-left precincts. … [T]hat kind of extreme thinking, based on little evidence, by the way, is putting all Americans in danger.
Tucker Carlson, MSNBC, 6/26:
What is really going on here, and you know it as well as I, is that Jack Murtha has been intoxicated by the amount of publicity that he has gotten from his anti-war crusade, and he has become progressively more unreasonable, progressively more left-wing as the days go on, and he is in the thrall of people who, I think, have hostility towards the United States.
Newt Gingrich, Fox News, 6/26:
For an American congressman to say that is beyond any acceptable behavior, and I would hope the Congress would move to censure him.
Murtha, however, never said anything of the sort. He did cite a Pew poll released two weeks ago showing that people around the world, including in closely-allied countries like Great Britain, believe the U.S. is the greatest threat to peace.
A statement released by Murtha’s office quotes an email from Melissa Sanchez of the Miami Herald, who also attended the speech, saying of the purported Murtha “quote”: “That was in reference to international polls. It was not so much his own conjecture, but a conclusion drawn from polls in various countries.”
The Sun-Sentinel plans on printing a correction. I think that those conservatives who attacked him owe him an apology as well.
As of the date and time stamp of this posting the following is correct:
The original first paragraph written by Elizabeth Baier at the Sun-Sentinel has been removed. Since their original correction to their story and my constant vigilance and the constantly updated reporting at theinfozone.net, they have rewritten this entire original article.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-ctownhall25jun25,0,7119684.story
What distinguishes this as unique is that though newspapers certainly update stories all the time, but when doing so, they are required by standard journalism practice to make clear it’s a revision, stating prominently at the top this story is a revision and updating the date of the article to the date of the revision. They have done neither.
Any impression created by this posting that this indicates that the Sun-Sentinel is covering up what they started by making all the uproar of this week over something that “never happened” is not my intent here. (legal disclaimers have become necessary)
Wait until you hear the new development today. The video of Murtha's speech in Miami has been released.
Cliff Hancuff
The World of Journalism Is Flat, Too
Looking at the large number of blog posts I've placed throughout the blogsphere in the last 2 weeks, I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking they look like spam. My apologies to all. Some interesting things happened today. I received an email response from Bill Pasco(e) of Diana Irey's campaign against John Murtha for the 12th District of Pennsylvania seat in the House of Representatives. In responding Mr. Pascoe's email, I found it useful to CC that response to him to Elizabeth Baier and her editor Ms. Rosenhause (Managing Editor Sun-Sentinel). The topic of those emails was "Rovian Architecture Unplugged". If you are interested to learn more, feel free to write them. Make "Rovian Architechure Unplugged" your subject heading so they know what your inquiry is about. Their email addresses: Bill Pascoe phone: (724) 258-2300 bill@irey.com Elizabeth Baier ebaier@sun-sentinel.com Sharon Rosenhause srosenhause@sun-sentinel.com Cliff Hancuff The World of Journalism Is Flat, Too
July 15th's entry of the right-wing "Prickly City", too, made fun of Murtha because of the quote.
Apparently, though, the cartoonist edited the strip after realizing the paper misquoted him. The original version, however, managed to make it to print in Rocky Mountain News.