Breibart Leads the Way for Sorry State of Right Wing Media on Paul Krugman Bankruptcy Satire article from The Daily Currant

Breitbart.com recently blasted The Washington Post for falling for a satirical The Daily Currant report which claimed that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had accepted a job with Al Jazeera.

Let me get this straight -- it is okay for Brietbart.com to attack the Washington Post for falling for a report from The Daily Currant but when Breitbart does the same thing, they immediately take down the story with no explanation?  Took most of the morning for Breitbart.com editor at large Larry O'Connor to Twitter they had been duped.  If they had bothered to do fact checking like bankruptcy court filings, they would have discovered it was not true but in their haste to run a negative story on Paul Krugman, they showed how little journalistic integrity they have - zero, zip, nada.

Breitbart.com was also one of the sites touting Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel speaking to Friends of Hamas along with accepting money for his speech which Ted Cruz used in his attacks on Hagel.  It was another false story this time from a reporter at the NY Daily News who was joking with a Senate aide who took it seriously,  Why check facts when a story fits your narrative?  This is more examples of the sad state of the media puppets on the right who think Fact Checking is a dirty word.  

When I read these comments from Paul Krugman this morning from his NY Times Blog, I burst out laughing.  Breitbart and other right wing media got scammed again because they refuse to check sources as they run with any story that fits their narrative to push the hard right agenda which attacks any liberal/progressive who might actually have facts on their side.  

March 11, 2013, 9:13 am

Breitbarted 

OK, I’m an evil person — and my scheming has paid off. 

On Friday I started hearing from friends about a fake story making the rounds about my allegedly filing for personal bankruptcy; I even got asked about the story by a reporter from Russian television, who was very embarrassed when I told him it was fake. But I decided not to post anything about it; instead, I wanted to wait and see which right-wing media outlets would fall for the hoax. 

And Breitbart.com came through! 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go give a lavishly paid speech to Friends of Hamas.

The way Krugman has handled this is hilarious - he kept quiet to see which right wing media would take the bait to rush to declare that Krugman had declared bankruptcy. Breitbart.com answered the call.  Media Matters has detailed how this all went down that has left Krugman and a lot of progressives grinning from ear to ear.

In the March 11 post, Breitbart.com editor at large Larry O'Connor mocked the Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist for his alleged financial mismanagement. 

Unfortunately for O'Connor, the report that Krugman went bankrupt is clearly a joke and originated from the satirical website The Daily Currant. O'Connor has since deleted the post without explanation. (Update: O'Connor tweeted, saying he "trusted Boston.com as the source for that Krugman piece, but they were duped by Daily Currant, therefore, so was I!") 

In his post, O'Connor jabbed Krugman for supposedly spending "$84,000 in one month" on Portuguese wines and "a dress from the Victorian period," and concluded that "apparently this Keynsian [sic] thing doesn't really work on the micro level." O'Connor sourced the report to a Boston.com post written by "Prudent Investor." The post by "Prudent Investor" sources an Austrian website, which reprinted the original Daily Currant story. 

O'Connor is scheduled to participate in the "CPAC 2013 All Star Panel" at this week's Conservative Political Action Conference. 

Screenshot of the post before it was deleted:

This is (at least) the second major embarrassment for the Breitbart sites in recent weeks. Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro was recently the target of widespread criticism and ridicule after he wrote a post highlighting the Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's ties to a nefarious, non-existent group called "Friends of Hamas." 

Breitbart.com recently blasted The Washington Post for falling for a satirical Daily Currant report which claimed that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had accepted a job with Al Jazeera.

Excerpt:  Read More at Media Matters

First Shapiro at Breitbart reported Secretary of Defense Hagel had spoken to the group Friends of Hamas which was the idea of a New York reporter pulling the chain of some Congressional aide who reported it to Breitbart and then Sen Cruz used it against Hagel in the confirmation hearing.  BTW it seems Cruz never apologized for using a phony report. Now Breitbart has reported the false rumors of a Krugman Bankruptcy while the Washington Post only has the Palin story on joining Al Jazeera as their satirical story passing for fact. Breibart is now one up on the Washington Post with a score of 2-1.

I sat and laughed at this article from Raw Story on the Krugman Bankruptcy. It confirms the obvious that  Breitbart never bothered to check if this story was true or not.

If you have a story to plant on the right, just go to Breitbart because their fact checking is missing.  Karl Rove must love Breitbart since he enjoys planting stories but come to think of it as hard right as Breitbart has become, they might not take a Rove story like the Washington Post, Washington Times, or NY Daily News would.

Breitbart uses satire website to smear Krugman with false bankruptcy report
By David Edwards
Monday, March 11, 2013 10:56 EDT  

Breitbart.com’s Big Journalism website on Monday fell for a fake report on a satire website which claimed that Nobel Price-winning economist had filed for bankruptcy.
Business Insider reported that Big Journalism’s Larry O’Connor ran with the satirical report from The Daily Currant in an effort to smear Krugman. 

Although Breitbart.com deleted the story — without posting an explanation — a copy preserved by Media Matters did not indicate that O’Connor had attempted to verify the report.
“Apparently this Keynsian [sic] thing doesn’t really work on the micro level,” the Breitbart columnist snarked. 

In a tweet, O’Connor blamed a March 7 report by The Boston Globe‘s website, which linked to a report in Austria’s Format website that cited the satirical Daily Currant. 

By Monday, the Format report has been updated to note that the source was a satirical website and that “the truth of the message accordingly low,” but the Globe‘s report had not been corrected by the time of publication.

Excerpts:  Read More at Raw Story

Then there is this from The American Spectator who is truly disappointed it wasn't true:

Earlier this morning, Breitbart News had posted an article about Paul Krugman filing for bankruptcy after years of lavish spending, seeming to show the irony of someone recommending big spending being done in by those policies on a personal level. 

It is a story that has been making its way around the web for a few days, and was picked up at the relatively reputable Boston.com except that it appears to have been posted by a blogger rather than a reporter. That blogger picked up the story from an Austrian magazine, Format. The Austrian magazine noted at the end of the piece that they got the story from the web site The Daily Currant which is a satire site, like an online version of The Onion. 

In short, the story about Krugman going bankrupt is an amusing bit of satire, one which many non-leftists might hope to be true — but which isn’t true. 

If you see the story being passed around as fact, you are now armed with the truth. I don’t like seeing “our side” passing around untruths because it makes us seem less credible. To be clear, the story was obviously explicitly satire given the source, and the fault with making it seem as if it were a real story lies with those who aren’t doing the one minute of fact-checking needed to recognize where it came from.

Another site to add to the lack of fact checking - Boston.com according to Business Insider who actually captured the screen shot of their report:

Boston.com's version was taken down early this afternoon. It appeared to originate from The Prudent Investor blog, which sourced Austria's format magazine. Here's a screenshot of what Boston.com's piece looked like:

Boston.com

Read more: Business Insider



While the right over the years has accused the left wing media of being biased, they have now caught up and seem to have taken it to a new low with running articles with no basis in fact.  When you are posting satirical articles as legitimate, maybe it is time to take a hard look at your organization because it has jumped the rails when satire passes for facts.

This is a sad commentary on the state of affairs for so-called journalism on the right starting with Fox News which it would take several blog posts to detail the lies and spin that come out of Fox anchors on a daily basis.  Murdoch has taken a once reliable business journal, The Wall Street Journal, and made it a laughingstock since he took over.  Their pages sometimes have the integrity of a gnat.  The day big business was allowed to own so many media outlets is the day that journalistic integrity started taking a real hit.

The mantra from the right that it is fault of the Mainstream Media just doesn't fly today -- it is a tired, worn out narrative that people have caught on to but the GOP still uses it today.  Another reason the GOP as a Party is in trouble - they have trouble with recognizing the truth.

Must admit at the end of the day, this whole debacle started by The Daily Currant, a satire site, has left me chuckling.  It is Monday, day after daylight savings time, and for the first time in years, I am laughing at reports of the Krugman bankruptcy being false instead of moaning about daylight savings time has started.