Yesterday morning, Politico.com posted the news that John Edwards would suspend his Presidential campaign due to Elizabeth Edwards’ illness, and other news hounds ran after the story like greyhounds running down hares. Unfortunately, there was one problem with the story. As all racing greyhounds eventually find out, the rabbit is not real.
But that didn’t stop Reuters’ greyhounds from chasing the mock hare:
CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina (Reuters) - Democrat John Edwards will suspend his presidential campaign, and may drop out completely, because his wife Elizabeth has suffered a recurrence cancer that struck her in 2004, a Democratic Party source said on Thursday.
He is going to be ending or suspending his campaign," said the Democratic source in Iowa, adding Edwards and his campaign had alerted some supporters in the state of his decision. "The big mystery seems to be how serious Elizabeth's illness is."
Then Reuters’ hounds caught the rabbit and discovered the forgery:
CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina (Reuters) - Democrat John Edwards said on Thursday he would continue his presidential campaign even though his wife Elizabeth has suffered a recurrence of cancer that first struck her in 2004.
"The campaign goes on. The campaign goes on strongly," Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina and the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, said at a news conference in his hometown.
You have to admire Reuters. They’re right at least 50% of the time.
Reuters’ greyhounds were not the only dogs looking at the back end of a mock hare, but we have to throw a bone to MSNBC, which voluntarily sent itself to the dog house:
“Earlier Thursday, MSNBC.com incorrectly reported that Edwards would suspend his campaign because of his wife’s illness. The report was based on a statement an Edwards friend made to Politico.com, a political Web site, and a source who spoke to NBC.”
We also throw a bone to Ben Smith, who posted the rabbit on Politico.com and later acknowledged that it was hasenpfeffer: "My apologies to our readers for passing on bad information." While we will continue to mock Ben Smith—Ben, if you’re going to post an apology, the title should be “How I Jumped the Shark,” not “How Politico Got It Wrong”—we appreciate that he posted his own mea culpa.
We have not seen anything from Reuters that sounds remotely like “we're sorry that we didn’t check our facts.”
It is excusable to chase the mock hare, but a smart greyhound barks when it realizes it’s been fooled, then heads back to the kennel.
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