Media: Um, that big Steve Scalise story probably didn’t happen

[JakeStyle]

Media: Um, that big Steve Scalise story probably didn’t happen, but he’s still ‘embattled’ anyway

By: John Hayward   
12/31/2014 09:51 AM

Key House Republican Spoke to White Nationalist Group in 2002

Hey remember how the biggest story in every mainstream media outlet yesterday was the shattering revelation that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) spoke to a group with ties to the odious white supremacist David Duke in 2002?  Ancillary stories blossomed with lightning speed throughout the day, spreading across the front pages like fractal patterns blooming on a computer screen saver: the latest comments from Scaliese, reactions from other Republican leaders, calls for his doom from top Democrats, hard-hitting political analysis from veteran correspondents about whether the “embattled” Republican could possibly survive this devastating scandal…

Have you checked the big news websites today?  Nothing.  Yesterday’s top story is gone.  CBS and NBC still have day-old posts about Scalise apologizing for delivering the brief 12-year-old address he barely remembers, but he’s vanished everywhere else.

There’s a good reason for that: it turns out the big story was, depending on how charitable you’re feeling, either dubiously sourced, a mistake, or an outright hoax.  It fell to Betsy Woodruff at Slate to dig deeper and discover that on the fateful day, Scalise actually spoke to an innocent civic association, along with representatives from the local sheriff’s office and the American Red Cross. The unpleasant chaps from the Duke-linked “EURO” group had the room booked after the civic association was finished with it.

http://humanevents.com/2014/12/31/media-um-that-big-steve-scalise-story-probably-didnt-happen/

[dutch508]

ooops.

[Chris_]

Journalism in the 21st century.  All bark, no bite.

[obumazombie]

No sourcing.
No confirming.
Not a thought to the idea that a story would be too good to run with.
It's all Jayson Blair journalism with Gruber as the editor.

[Big Dog]

No sourcing.
No confirming.
Not a thought to the idea that a story would be too good to run with.
It's all Jayson Blair journalism with Gruber as the editor.

And William Rivers Pitt, Executive Editor.

[SVPete]

Here's Woodruff's article (excerpted):

White Noise: Did House Majority Whip Steve Scalise admit to speaking at a white supremacist event he never attended?
By Betsy Woodruff
slate.com
DEC. 30 2014 6:49 PM

Rep. Steve Scalise may have just ineptly admitted to speaking at a white supremacist event that eyewitnesses say he never attended. Two event attendees say it’s factually inaccurate to characterize Scalise’s comments as directed at the supremacist gathering ....

Kenny Knight is a longtime associate of David Duke ... . He’s been a key player in news that broke on Sunday that indicated Scalise addressed the white supremacist convention of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization when he was a Louisiana state representative in May 2002.

Knight said on Tuesday that it’s “totally incorrect” to say Scalise spoke at that convention.

“He spoke early in the day to a contingent of people, prior to the conference kicking off,” Knight said. “He was not there as a guest speaker at the conference.”
...
Knight has known and publicly supported Duke for decades. He agreed to help Duke set up some of the logistics for the 2002 EURO convention, especially since the former KKK leader was in Russia at the time of the event. ...
...
According to Knight, the EURO conference was slated to start in the early afternoon, roughly around 1 p.m. But his reservation at the hotel gave him access to the conference space for a few hours before the event’s official kickoff. At the time, Knight headed the Jefferson Heights Civic Association, which was largely comprised of elderly people who lived in his and Scalise’s neighborhood.

Knight said he set up a morning event for his own civic association in the hotel space before the EURO conference started. Though that event was in the conference’s hospitality room, it wasn’t at all related to the EURO event, he said.
...
Knight invited then–state Rep. Scalise as well as a representative from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office and a person from the American Red Cross to speak to the civic association ... The representative from the sheriff’s department spoke to attendees about a neighborhood watch program, and the person from the Red Cross discussed CPR techniques. Scalise also spoke.

“I wanted to reach out to him and give him an audience so he could talk to people from his district about legislation he was proposing,” Knight said. ...

Knight estimates that about two-thirds to three-quarters of the people in the hospitality room at the civic association meeting were local residents who weren’t there to attend the EURO event ...

The details and sequence of events also explain why Rep. Scalise admitted having done something he did not do.

[J P Sousa]

Steve Scalise has been Grubered by the media.



I think the name adjective "Fink" has been replaced by Grubered. 

[obumazombie]

I can't wait to see all the retractions and apologies for all the lib goon journalists who jumped on the story.

[SVPete]

I can't wait to see all the retractions and apologies for all the lib goon journalists who jumped on the story.

Don't be turning blue on us! The world has enough Smurfs!

[JohnnyReb]

I guess that after 12/13 years they thought no one could check on who rented the venue and which group he spoke to.

Great tries reap great failures.

[the county]

And don't forget this "story" originated with the SPLC, themselves arguably a "hate group".

[obumazombie]

I would hate for this thread to end.
It is a microcosm of the lib community.
Give wings to all lib fantasies and report them as if fact.
Get sound bite, platitudes and bumper sticker chants into the communities based on the lib fantasies that are completely detached from reality.
Lib journalism is an oxymoron, a paradox...if you consider journalism to be fact, evidence, observed and objective based reporting.
Then the story should go to an editor who would have editorial ethics, and a strong sense of morality.
But when it comes to lib editors considering lib stories brought to them by lib reporters, it's rubber stamp time...

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jack-coleman/2015/01/01/hugh-hewitt-brings-dazed-buzzfeed-editor-around-dead-cops-story

If it wasn't tragic, it would actually be humorous.

[SVPete]

I would hate for this thread to end.
It is a microcosm of the lib community.
Give wings to all lib fantasies and report them as if fact.
Get sound bite, platitudes and bumper sticker chants into the communities based on the lib fantasies that are completely detached from reality.
Lib journalism is an oxymoron, a paradox...if you consider journalism to be fact, evidence, observed and objective based reporting.
Then the story should go to an editor who would have editorial ethics, and a strong sense of morality.
But when it comes to lib editors considering lib stories brought to them by lib reporters, it's rubber stamp time...

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jack-coleman/2015/01/01/hugh-hewitt-brings-dazed-buzzfeed-editor-around-dead-cops-story

If it wasn't tragic, it would actually be humorous.

Hugh hewitt isn't "just" a talkshow host. He's a practicing lawyer and a law professor. Trying to weasel words with him isn't going to fly. Ben Smith should know better than to try, but I guess when you've been nailed the choice is between saying, "We were wrong," or trying something stupid. Smith chose stupid.

[obumazombie]

^He admitted to gross incompetence and journalistic malpractice as an editor.