USA Today Editor Stunned by Taser Story - (CBS Memogate connection; now big "taser" error)

A.I.M.ORG ^ | JULY 18, 2005 | CLIFF KINCAID

[CHARLITE]

Ken Paulson took over as editor at USA Today in the wake of the Jack Kelley scandal. Kelley had embarrassed the paper by writing a series of stories filled with lies. Paulson said that would never happen again. Then, he presided over USA Today's own version of the CBS Memogate scandal.

Like CBS, USA Today used those bogus documents to discredit President Bush's National Guard service. But Paulson managed to exercise a form of damage control because CBS used the documents first and put them on TV. Paulson acted as if the scandal was confined to CBS. Many in the media went along with his ploy. They pretended that USA Today was not as tarred by the scandal as CBS.

Now, however, Paulson has got another scandal on his hands. This one might not be so easy to dismiss because it has already become a lawsuit against USA Today's parent company, Gannett.

As we noted in a Media Monitor before the suit was filed, USA Today's June 3 article about the non-lethal Taser devices used in law enforcement was seriously flawed. The USA Today sidebar showed photographs of a Taser X26, an electric chair, a lightning storm, and an electric train track. The sidebar explicitly compared the output of the Taser X26 to that of an "electric chair" and said the Taser output was 100 times that of the chair.

That was untrue. The Taser system's average current is more than 1,000 times less than that of the electric chair.

[RoseofTexas]

My son who attends a liberal college and leans a tad lib shocked me this morn by telling me people don't believe the media anymore. When I questioned him some more on the subject he kinda clammed up, but said that the majority of people don't believe them anymore....WOW! Something is going on under the media's radar and the idiots don't have a clue....WOW that tells me a lot coming from my middle of the road in politics son!!

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

Thanks for that, I desperately clicked on this thread to see an obvious post in a tribute to a beeber and I couldn't even get one in the first 10 posts! I am going to go and tend to my sister, she was bitten by a moose...

[ahayes]

I'm sorry to hear that! Mind you, moose bites can be quite nasty!

[Sally'sConcerns]

If I remember correctly, cheese helps fix moose bites.

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

:o) to both of you.

[georgiabelle]

I worked for a sheriff's department for about 6 weeks. During that time they had taser classes. This consisted of videos, hands on with mock hooks(no electricty) and then you got your little butt tasered. The only difference was that instead of the 5 second burst we only got a 2 second burst. Believe me it was enough. Most of the class would have went to their knees if we hadn't had two very large deputies holding us up.

No LE in the state of Ga is allowed to you a taser without first being tasered. It will make you want to stay legal.

[Just mythoughts]

"No LE in the state of Ga is allowed to you a taser without first being tasered. It will make you want to stay legal."

Makes common sense.

[festus]

Darn. I was just about to conjure up McCarthy to have a go at you ..... ;-)

[festus]

Well if you have ever surfed a leftist site, like say the DU, you will discover they actually are convinced the press is biased in favor of George Bush.

( NOTE: I don't recommend doing this yourself as it is quite painful and can cause nightmares ;-)

I suspect similar thoughts are floating around liberal college campuses.