'At What Point Do We Stop Saying This is Accidental,' Asks Radio Host Bob Kincaid
By Brad Friedman on 10/11/2006, 8:29pm PT  

A rightwing extremist "news" outlet, Newsmax.com, was apparently also unable to help labelling disgraced Republican sexual predator Rep. Mark Foley as a Democrat in a report released on their website this morning.

Our buddy Bob Kincaid of Head-On Radio alerted us to this report today from NewsMax's "chief Washington correspondent," Ronald Kessler...

Page Scandal Goes Deeper

Ronald Kessler
Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006

The scandal involving inappropriate e-mail messages by former Rep. Mark Foley, D-Fla., to congressional pages understandably has led to calls for abolishing the page program.

Kincaid asks us via email: "At what point do we stop saying that this is accidental?"

The original appearance of such an "accident" occurred, as we reported it last week, when Fox "News" labelled the Republican Foley as a Democrat in a chyron over a video cutaway. Three of them, in fact. Across two different O'Reilly Factor segments. After our report brought attention to the issue, Fox blanked out that part of the screen during their two subsequent of the program later that night.

The next day, Associated Press did the same thing, but at least had the decency to both correct the problem by changing the "D" to "R" and noting the original "error" at the bottom of the report in a journalistically appropriate way when they did so.

Like phony news organization Fox, who told Editor & Publisher a few days later that they felt no "correction per se" was necessary, phony news organization Newsmax apparently doesn't believe they need to tell anybody of the "error." They changed the "D" in their story to "R" later in the day --- after who knows how many had read the article --- but didn't bother to note the change in the updated article.

So much for Republican journalistic ethics. So much for Republicans taking personal responsibility. For anything.

UPDATE 3:33pm PT: Editor & Publisher picks up this story...

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