Posted on 05/31/2011 1:35:14 AM PDT by GonzoII
Posted on May 30 2011 - 4:40 AM - Posted by: Stacy Drake
Andy Barr offered us another fine example of excellence in journalism during his coverage of the Rolling Thunder event on Sunday, in Washington DC. He writes in the first paragraph (emphasis):
Only one advance staffer was on hand to wrangle the fans and reporters hoping to get close to the former vice presidential nominee, who arrived at Sundays Rolling Thunder rally on a motorcycle driven by her daughter Willow.
Wait, what?
Willow Palin is 16 years old. The woman who drove Governor Palin to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial looks young, but she certainly looks old enough to vote.
I actually know the name of the woman driving and it isn’t “Willow Palin.” She lives in my city where she does NOT attend High School, but in fact, owns a small business. I’m not going to publish her name here however, due to the fact that she has not released it through any media agency or otherwise in connection with the Rolling Thunder event.
That said, the best part of the Andy Barr piece is that he already posted a correction about who was driving the motorcycle. At the end of the article, he wrote (emphasis):
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly indicated that Sarah Palin was driving a motorcycle when she arrived. Willow Palin was.
He really got this obvious, yet basic fact wrong TWICE!

A San Diegan who is not Willow Palin and Governor Palin riding to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial during Rolling Thunder event in Washington DC, 2011.
I’m not going to launch into some tirade by insinuating some sort of bias on Andy Barr’s part here. Clearly it wasn’t Andy’s, nor his editors political leanings at work here. This is actually the same problem I alluded to the other day when I wrote the piece about ABC’s horrendous reporting. This is pure laziness and sloppiness on the part of Barr and his editors.
It’s bad enough that we as Americans have to deal with the constant diet of bias from the leftist media mills. But when they can’t even get the basic who, what, where, when, why, and how of a story correct, it makes you wonder why they exist at all. We’re accustomed to reading news and filtering out the bias, just to grab on to a fact or two. As it turns out, that might not be a good idea either.
There was another attack on Gov. Palin some time ago that involved claiming she had some paid makeup artist following her around to functions and they had the “photo” to prove it. Yeah. It was one of her daughters fixing mom’s makeup. I don’t recall seeing the media correction.
This will get worse but the more it gets worse the more it will help Sarah Palin because of the blowback by sensible people who can easily recognize the terrible bias of lunatic proportions.
Andy Barr’s mother drives him to work. Fixes his lunch and puts it in a Pee Wee Herman lunch box.
Saw a photo on a thread posted on Monday that showed Sarah on what looks to be the same motorcycle, but the woman in front had on a white, tight fitting pullover shirt.
That’s what happens when you e-mail your story in from the local bar.
Petrina just verified by face book message to me, that it was indeed her who was the biker giving Sarah a ride.
She has now changed her profile photo to them together on her bike.
I kinda agree....after the newspapers started terminating the older guys...all you had left were the rookies and guys who wrote local news pieces. We are lucky that they can write more than twelve lines at a time.

The "paid staffer" photo in question.
If Sarah Palin runs, the MSM will be forever changed... Go for it Sarah...
That's what I call investigative reporting!!
There is a method to this. It covers all aspects, and illustrates why Rush Limbaugh’s characterization of the media as “The Drive-By Media” is so brilliant and accurate.
It has been going on forever, but with the speed of media currently, it is so effective it is disturbing.
The media can say anything...ANYTHING at all, and are never called to account for it. If they do acknowledge the error, it is done in such a subtle and discreet way that the consumers of the original error NEVER, EVER hear of it, even in the case of the most BLATANT errors.
The NYT is a great example-they will almost universally refuse to correct errors, and if they are forced into it, will place the correction to a front page error in a two sentence blurb next to the page six article about the most inane subject that can be found.
There is an excellent book “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies” by M. Stanton Evans who was a cub reporter rising to become the youngest person ever to the head editorialist for a national metropolitan newspaper.
In his book, he relates his struggle to have the NYT retract or correct glaring, obvious, critical and 100% verifiable errors in their coverage of the events surrounding Senator McCarthy back in the fifties.
They simply refused to do so, and we all know why. It isn’t NEWS to them, it is politics, in which they view themselves as an important player even though they are loathe to admit it.
They play the dynamic (so brilliantly described by Rush Limbaugh as “The Drive-By Media) so effectively, driving up to the “scene” of a story, “firing” out the window of their newspaper anything they please to achieve the effect they wish, then stepping on the accelerator to drive on to the next story.
At the “scene”, truth is bloodily ravaged, and consumers of news unthinkingly take it all in. The victims of the drive-by are responsible for the clean-up, which is impossible without the involvement of the instigator themselves, and the story is never changed. If it is changed, it is like the Obama birth certificate issue.
In this example, when confronted by the issue, unthinking consumers will wrinkle their foreheads and say earnestly “Well, they DID issue a valid birth certificate, didn’t they? I saw it on the news...”
As their hero, Vladimir Lenin said: A lie told often enough becomes truth, it is also true that a lie told once to everyone in mass media becomes the truth as well.
The wedding ring should have been a clue.
great post!
I remained puzzled all day wondering if I was looking at the right picture.
“Politico” has no class, no shame, no honesty, no truth. Just an “Obama” spin rag!!! Andy Barr and the entire staff from top to bottom has never ventured into the real world with real people. It glaringly shows in everything they pen!!!
You should realize the temps here in the DC area were in the mid 90’s with high humidity. Wearing a dark jacket while sitting still ain’t too healthy. If you look closely at the top photo the driver has a white shirt underneath and it’s the same bike in both photos.
“He really got this obvious, yet basic fact wrong TWICE!”
You’re right, and it’s worse than that. They’re getting our country wrong.
Thanks, CT Hillbilly...these people should be ashamed of themselves. I would be embarrassed to spit out such inaccurate pap. And the inaccuracies are just as dangerous in many cases as their intentional spins.
Bah. I would be embarrassed as a professional, but they apparently don’t care. you see this same incompetency anytime they report on anything military. They get unit designations wrong, call a destroyer a battleship, a B-52 a fighter and so on.
They don’t care, the bunch of losers.
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