Jim Treacher links to a clip of Jon Stewart (!) asking when Brian Ross will be uttering the words, “And, I am really f–king sorry. Real sorry. Deeply sorry. Deeply, irrevocably sorry to the innocent man that I casually, baselessly, and publicly accused of, I don’t know, maybe being a mass murderer. Because when I was Googling his name I saw the phrase ‘the Tea Party’ and I thought ‘Ooh, that’s an interesting narrative, I should get that on the TV.”
Treacher adds:
Alex Pappas has provided a helpful list of past smears against the Tea Party. I can’t remember if Jon Stewart got this worked up about any of those, but it’s helpful to look at the pattern. This didn’t happen in isolation, and if it’s still happening after the media’s bizarre, credibility-eroding coverage of Jared Loughner — Palin did it, guys? Really? — then it’s going to keep happening. You can’t shame the shameless. Hell, ABC made George Stephanopoulos an anchor. They have not yet begun to stoop.
Oh and speaking of shameless, Ross was also involved as part of the group at ABC that wrote up their first phone call to the terrorist’s mother and tossed in a little editorializing in what should be a straight news story, as this passage with text bolded by Hot Air’s Allahpundit highlights:
A California woman who identified herself as the mother of James Holmes, the 24-year-old man federal authorities said is the suspect in a mass shooting in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, told ABC News her son was likely the alleged culprit, saying, “You have the right person.”
The woman, contacted at her home in San Diego, spoke briefly with ABC News and immediately expressed concern her son may be involved in the shooting death of at least 12 people overnight.
“You have the right person,” she said, apparently speaking on gut instinct. “I need to call the police… I need to fly out to Colorado.”
Don’t miss Kathy Shaidle’s take on this: “Oh great: ‘You have the right person’ is the new ‘Let him have it.’”
Update:“The purpose of the news media is not primarily to present news as impartially as possible. It is to improve society — which to liberals means, above all, fighting the Right,” Dennis Prager writes. “So when Brian Ross linked the Aurora mass murderer to the Tea Party, in his mind, he was doing the right thing. Is there one person in America who believes that if Ross had discovered a James Holmes in Aurora active in the ACLU, he would have reported it?”
Which dovetails perfectly with John Nolte’s response at Big Journalism: For ABC, the buck must stop not with Ross, but with George Stephanopoulos.
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