This is the media fallacy that refuses to die, no matter how many wooden stakes we drive into its heart. This morning we had Timmy dragging out the old,
debunked story about Reid and Abramoff and the Maurianas Islands, trying vainly to paint Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the Abramoff corrupt corner.
Then we have NPR and Fox's Mara Liasson falsely claiming that Democrats received tainted Abramoff money, too. Via Thnk Progress:
I think every time you hear another one of these kind of bipartisan scandal stories, where it's Democrats, not just Republicans taking money from Abramoff, it underlines a feeling that people tell pollsters over and over again, that everybody does it.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Between 2001 and 2004, Abramoff gave more than $127,000 to Republican candidates and committees and nothing to Democrats, federal records show.
This is not "fair and balanced" reporting, Mara. This is a lie.
Update [2006-5-7 16:31:11 by mcjoan]: Want to know how clueless Mara Liasson is? Even Deborah Howell admits this is a Republican scandal.
My mistake set off a firestorm. I heard that I was lying, that Democrats never got a penny of Abramoff-tainted money, that I was trying to say it was a bipartisan scandal, as some Republicans claim. I didn't say that. It's not a bipartisan scandal; it's a Republican scandal, and that's why the Republicans are scurrying around trying to enact lobbying reforms.