For the second time in the last seven days, the media has reported rumor as news about Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, without verification or confirmation and has been proven to be wrong on both occasions.
Yesterday again, another rumor based story hit the headline news at ABC and in the New York Times, with a piece based on the word of a woman, who took the rumor told to her by another person and gave it to the New York Times as fact, which in turn, the Times and other media outlets ran with it, none of them bothering to do the simple verification process that would have shown them before they reported, that it was all based in "incorrect" information.
The false story was about Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin again, this time alleging that she has belonged to the Alaska Independence Party for two years in the 1990’s.
According to the New York Times, this issue was among the "news" that had been revealed about Sarah Palin.
Documents were produced showing the information was wrong, but the Times did not and still has not issued a correction on the main story page that rippled across the Internet yesterday, linked to by various sources.
"Governor Palin has been a registered Republican since 1982," Rogers says, providing voter registration documentation showing her to be a Republican. "As you know, if she changed her registration, there would have been some record of it. There isn’t."
ABC News did report on the documents showing the story could very well be false and to give them credit for doing what the Times did not, they also issued an update at the bottom of their piece which said, "This post has been updated one day later, after the McCain campaign responded, and again after Fenumiai returned several calls for comment. And then, once again, after Clark rescinded her assertion that Gov. Palin had been a member of the AIP."
The New York Times Caucus blog, reported today how the "incorrect" information came to be reported.
The information in the Times article was based on a statement issued Monday night by Lynette Clark, the party’s chairwoman, who said that Ms. Palin joined the party in 1994 and in 1996 changed her registration to Republican.
On Tuesday night, Ms. Clark said that her initial statement was incorrect and had been based on erroneous information provided by another member of the party whom she declined to identify. The McCain campaign also disputed the Times report, saying that Ms. Palin had been registered consistently as a Republican.
It turns out that Todd Palin once belonged to the group, but Sarah Palin never did.
Once again, rumor was reported as news. No basic confirmation or verification was done by The New York Times, nor others that was spreading the rumor based so-called "news" and their Caucus blog was left to correct the mistake after the headlines and rumor spread throughout the day yesterday.
Is it any wonder why the majority of the public distrusts the major media organizations?
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