Reuters this morning published a grossly inaccurate story on Senator Marco Rubio. Among the eight fallacies:

Rubio also voted against Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s Supreme Court nominee who is of Puerto Rican descent, and more recently blocked the confirmation of another Puerto Rican, Marie Carmen Aponte, as ambassador to El Salvador.

Rubio was not a senator at the time the Sotomayor vote was cast.

Reuters also asserts:

He also voted against Obama’s healthcare overhaul, which is popular among many low-income Hispanics.

Rubio was and is against it but could not have voted for it at the time because he had not been elected. Obamacare passed in March 21, 2010. Rubio was elected on November 2, 2010 and assumed office on January 3, 2011.

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Al Jazeera was eager to promote the debunked lie that Rick Santorum compared same-sex marriage to bestiality:

He has argued against same-sex marriage arguing that could open the door to other unacceptable relations, equating homosexuality with bestiality or pedophilia.

Simply reading or listening to Santorum’s quote would prevent anyone from making so grand a logical leap:

“Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that’s what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality–”

Now, does it sound to YOU as though Santorum was categorizing homosexual-male-sex as “man on dog”? Negative. To anyone with basic reading comprehension skills, it is clear Santorum was actually cautioning that he is not equating gay marriage with other prohibited-marriage categories such as “man on child” (individuals marrying minors) and “man on dog” (individuals marrying animals).  Regardless of one’s views on gay marriage, or Santorum’s own, he did not, in any way, slam male-on-male sex as “man on dog.”  It seems those who actively read that visual picture into Santorum’s comments need to get their heads out of the gutter and, ironically, stop revealing their own homophobia in even making the connection.

At that point, Santorum was interrupted by the interviewer who apparently joked that he/she was not expecting to hear a U.S. Senator use the term “man on dog.”

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In an article published last week, Rachel Coward of the Columbia Missourian falsely claimed that Andrew Breitbart edited videos of a controversial labor studies course at the University of Missouri in which lecturers instructed students in violent tactics, indoctrinated them with revisionist left-wing economic history, and encouraged them to join the Communist Party, among other inappropriate conduct.

Here are the facts.

A highlight video of clips from 31 hours of classroom instruction (which has since been removed from YouTube) was published at Big Government on April 25, 2011. Neither Andrew Breitbart nor anyone employed by Breitbart.com edited the videos–a fact long since established by Insurgent Visuals, which claimed full responsibility for the highlight reel.

Coward claimed:

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart manipulated classroom videos to make the instructors seem as though they supported violence in labor-management relations, according to an article by Inside Higher Ed.

Coward cites an inaccurate article at Inside Higher Ed that was itself the subject of a correction request last May. (more…)

On Tuesday, December 27, FishbowlDC’s Peter Ogburn wrote the following in reference to the Daily Caller’s Michelle Fields’ hour-long appearance with Brian Lamb on C-Span: [emphasis added]

As the interview winds down, Lamb asks where Michelle would like to see her career go. She says she would like to be “in the media. As a journalist. Maybe an anchor.” Let’s not get carried away, Michelle. Reality can be a dear friend sometimes. Lamb asks if America is ready for an anchor who gives opinions and Michelle doubles down on her journalistic philosophy. “I think people want opinions.  People want someone to tell them what to think.”

A look at the actual interview proves that this is not what Ms. Fields said. In fact, it’s quite obvious that what she said and meant was the complete opposite:

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Yesterday, in an article titled “Mo. crackdown on taping lectures shows digital divide over academic freedom, student privacy,” the Associated Press falsely claimed that Big Government edited controversial footage of a University of Missouri labor studies course. From the article:

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website obtained a leaked copy and edited hours of classroom lectures to suggest that she and a classroom colleague advocated union violence.

Neither Breitbart, nor Big Government, nor any of the Breitbart editors edited the footage in question.

In fact, Insurgent Visuals claimed publicly that they edited the classroom videos after they were posted online and leaked. (more…)

Sunday on ABC”s “This Week” Nancy Pelosi shamelessly repeated the debunked lie that the tea party “spit” on congressmen during the walk to sign the health care law in spring of 2010. The thing is, Pelosi’s story never happened.

We’ve published countless video from a multitude of sources which completely disproves this lie. The NAACP couldn’t keep their story straight initially. When it was proven that the “spitting” incident was a lie, Congressman Cleaver immediately walked back his story. From Big Government:

3.  Rep. Emanuel Cleaver DID claim HE was spat on, but then after he and everyone else in the world reviewed the video and saw that errant spittle from a man screaming “Kill the Bill!” is what hit Rep Cleaver, he walked back the charge.

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MSNBC’s Ed Schultz–reporting from Ohio–lead a panel that advanced the falsehood that new legislation (SB 5) prevents firefighters and police from bargaining collectively on personal safety equipment:

In fact, SB 5 explicitly provides–as existing law does not–for collective bargaining on personal safety equipment. Here are the two most relevant excerpts:

…

After the panel, a reporter explained to Schultz that SB 5 allows for firefighters and police to bargaining collectively on personal safety equipment, to which Schultz replied, “I don’t think it does.”

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In an Associated Press article published last night, Becky Bohrer writes the following: [emphasis ours]

[Governor Sarah Palin's attorney] John Tiemessen, in a letter to the publisher of Crown Publishing Group Monday, cites an email that author Joe McGinniss allegedly sent a blogger in January seeking substantiation for several rumors that have surrounded Palin’s family. That email was posted online last week by Andrew Breitbart.

The email in question was not “allegedly sent.” Both Joe McGinniss and the party the email was sent to, Jesse Griffin, are on the record verifying the email.

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While on Lebanese television, Media Matters ally Max Blumenthal fabricated several quotes and attributed them to Herman Cain. Only Blumenthal knows whether these fabrications were intentional, so as to discredit Cain maliciously, or born of Blumenthal’s poor recollection ability.

Let’s review.

BLUMENTHAL QUOTE:

” … who has said that he would impose loyalty oaths for any Muslim who wanted to serve in the federal government. Completely unAmerican.”

ACTUAL CAIN QUOTE:

” … I would ask certain questions, John. And it’s not a litmus test. It is simply trying to make sure that we have people committed to the Constitution first in order to for them to work effectively in the administration.”

BLUMENTHAL QUOTE:

” … he said that mosques should not be built in American communities …”

CAIN:

Wallace: So you’re saying any community, if they want to ban a mosque?

Cain: Yes, they have the right to do that.

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Earlier this evening Reuters reported, as per Senator Jon Kyl, that Republicans had agreed to a compromise on tax hikes:

They also published an account on their website.

They were wrong. Kyle specifically detailed how the revenue would come from liquidating government property and use fees.

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A good catch by Jonah Goldberg, via the PJ Tatler. Reuters incorrectly identifies shamed former congressman Anthony Weiner as a Republican in its latest piece on the #Weinergate scandal:

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Last night we reported that Politico had falsely attributed an attack on Michele Bachmann to Sarah Palin, and now Politico has corrected the “error”:

An editing error caused a false attribution in an earlier version of this column. A comment by the authors was transformed into a direct quote from Sarah Palin. She never said the words attributed to her. Those words were written by the authors.

But this may have been less “an editing error” as much as it was an ideology error.  Given Politico’s history of bias against conservatives, especially the Palins, it’s hard to believe an error this egregious is a coincidence.  The misquote had plenty of time to grab headlines before Politico got around to admitting to a whoopsie, and that serves Politico’s established ideological agenda.

To say we don’t take the Politico team at their word would qualify as an understatement.

KTLA’s recent article on Congressman Anthony Weiner’s x-rated photo is incorrect on how the photo came to be published on the Internet.

Breitbart said he was not going to publish the photo to his website, BigGovernment.com, but it’s not clear if he approved of the radio hosts’ decision to tweet it.

The article was written after Andrew Breitbart posted this statement on the website by KTLA, Big Government.

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Politico knew they likely wouldn’t get a quote from Sarah Palin for the latest hit piece they published so they made one up. One of the authors is the former chairman of the Democratic Party of Virgina.

Politico wrote:

Will Sarah Palin’s intensifying rivalry with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) cause the former Alaska governor to run for president?

The first female Republican vice presidential nominee clearly believes she is the one who has paid the heavy dues by bearing the brunt of the “liberal elite” attacks to help build the tea party, social conservative wing of the GOP.

Palin’s bus tour had some of the hallmarks of a primal scream: “I built this constituency, not Bachmann, not anyone else,” she said. Looking at it through her eyes, she has a point.

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Screencap from the Breitbart.com newswires:

A Reuters headline editor doing some wishful thinking, perhaps? Obviously this should be corrected.

Tim Barker at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch falsely claimed that the exculpatory portion of Shirley Sherrod’s remarks were not included in the original posting or video originally posted on Big Government. Barker writes:

This isn’t the first controversy created by Breitbart’s heavy editing of videos. In another recent incident, a U.S. Agriculture Department employee was fired over what appeared to be a racist remark made in a speech. It was later revealed that the edited video left out a part of her speech that explained her comment as being part of a lesson on racial healing.

The story appeared in both the print and online version of the paper.

… Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help.

In an April 29, 2011 item by Scott Jaschik, Inside High Ed published this false statement provided by University of Missouri professor Judy Ancel:

Ancel, the other instructor, said in an interview that she works on annual contracts and that the university has not taken any action against her. She also released a statement in which she explained the context behind some of the quotes shown in the video.

For example, she noted that one of her quotes in the Breitbart video is: “violence is a tactic and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.” Here is what she said really happened: “After students had watched a film on the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike and the assassination of Martin Luther King, they were discussing nonviolence. I said, ‘One guy in the film … said ‘violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.’ ” In this instance, she said, “Breitbart’s editing has literally put words in my mouth that were not mine, and they never were mine.”

That is demonstrably false and misleading and was addressed in a subsequent post at Big Government by Insurgent Visuals after an additional careful review of the film in question.

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A week ago we asked Media Matters to correct their inaccurate information in their post about Planned Parenthood offering mammograms. While we believe that the elements of a news story must be factually accurate to constitute as news and not propaganda, Media Matters disagreed.

They declined to correct their piece.

Every defense they have put up about their story has been thoroughly discredited:

Media Matters Still Has Trouble With the Word “Provider,” Owes Correction

Media Matters Proves Why Planned Parenthood Doesn’t Need Taxpayer Funding

Media Matters Refuses To Retract Factual Error

CORRECTION REQUEST STANDS: Media Matters Fudged Truth On Planned Parenthood Mammograms

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In a bid to discredit the Live Action’s investigation of Planned Parenthood as a “hoax,” Media Matters forgot that fact-checking matters most.

Says Media Matters:

This is false.

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Big Journalism on Wednesday reported that the New York Times finally conceded to correcting their article on Brandon Darby’s involvement with an FBI case of domestic terrorism.

While NPR fights for public funding on the basis of its news reporting, Minnesota Public Radio published a factually incorrect statement about the Darby case in the context of a documentary, and needs to correct it:

Darby, by the way, is suing the New York Times for defamation because of this story which revealed him as the informant. He objects to the Times’ claim that he encouraged the two men to make Molotov cocktails.

MPR apparently missed that the NYT retracted its earlier claim that Darby “encouraged” the two men in question to make Molotov cocktails as it was false. Our earlier reporting:

We noted that according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota, the assertion Darby “encouraged” the plot was patently false.  On February 27th, we brought in Matthew Vadum, an expert on the circumstances surrounding the plot, to provide broader context to the Times’s smear.

Darby isn’t suing the NYT because they “revealed him as an informant.” He’s suing the NYT because they published falsehoods about his involvement with the attempted domestic terrorist attack.

We ask that Bob Collins with MPR correct his reporting. We will keep you updated.