The Houston Chronicle has falsely reported that the Tea Party election integrity group True the Vote is the target of a Department of Justice investigation. The Chronicle reporter, Joe Holley, was made aware of the error both directly and indirectly, and yet the paper has not corrected the error.
If you needed another reason why newspapers like the Houston Chronicle have declining or dead circulation growth, add fabricating stories about Justice Department investigations of Tea Party groups to the list.
Bryan Preston covered the True the Vote Summit in Houston lie-free last weekend here and here at PJ Tatler.
The Houston Chronicle couldn’t match Preston’s standards for honesty. It reported:
The King Street effort resulted in numerous complaints about voter intimidation. . . and an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
It is false and libelous to report that the Justice Department was investigating True the Vote or Kings Street Patriots. No source is offered by Holley for this assertion. In fact, I have seen a Department of Justice response to a Congressional inquiry by a Texas Congressman that plainly states that no records exist of any investigation of True the Vote. It may be true that activists and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee sought to intimidate elderly female poll watchers for True the Vote in locations throughout Houston during the 2010 election, and then complained to DOJ about True the Vote.
But that does not an investigation make.
While DOJ is pondering what is worth investigating in Texas, perhaps DOJ might inquire as to why so many people were registered to vote in Texas even though they marked their registration forms that they were not citizens of the United States. Better still, perhaps Mr. Holley and his boss Jeff Cohen could do the job the free press was meant to do.
They could start with retracting the false statements about True the Vote, and then ask why self-confessed non-citizens were registered to vote. Unless of course the Houston Chronicle has other priorities.
If this straw breaks your camel’s back, and you want to speed the demise of dead-trees media outlets that make up facts about Tea Party groups, you can cancel your Chronicle subscription by calling 713-362-7171.
Presuming the facts are as Mr. Adams says, I certainly encourage everyone to do as he suggests. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country by refusing to financially support any media establishment once it shows its bias.
I don’t live in Houston, but I did cancel my local paper subscription – there were definitely getting a liberal “bent” in it’s reporting.
I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper for about 15-20 years, and I quit watching TV news altogether on Election Night 2008.
I just bought a bumper sticker that says, “THE MEDIA IS LYING TO YOU.” Hopefully it will make some people stop and think.
I’m tempted to subscribe just so I can unsubscribe!
I did subscribe to the Comical for about 12 years. I finally had enough of the Comical’s lies 8 years ago or so, and cancelled. About a month later I got a call saying, “Mr. X, you’ve been a subscriber for many years, why did you cancel?” I replied with, “I’m sorry, but I could no longer support the Communist Party”. You could almost see the poor lady running down her list to find an appropriate box to check. Finally, frustrated, she just said “Thank you” and hung up.
I sat at the table right beside Joe Holley. I couldn’t help but watch him during the Summit. He was almost never engaged in the summit for the sake of answering and responding to his two phones that sat right in front of him the whole time. He was clearly not there in pursuit of truth. I was there. I watched. I saw with my own eyes.