House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA)
Regarding this non-scandal, one radio talk show host said, "It is not a double standard. Democrats have no standards. Only Republicans have standards.
[From article]
the biggest story in every mainstream media outlet yesterday was the shattering revelation that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) spoke to a group with ties to the odious white supremacist David Duke in 2002? Ancillary stories blossomed with lightning speed throughout the day, spreading across the front pages like fractal patterns blooming on a computer screen saver: the latest comments from Scaliese, reactions from other Republican leaders, calls for his doom from top Democrats, hard-hitting political analysis from veteran correspondents about whether the “embattled” Republican could possibly survive this devastating scandal…
Have you checked the big news websites today? Nothing. Yesterday’s top story is gone. CBS and NBC still have day-old posts about Scalise apologizing for delivering the brief 12-year-old address he barely remembers, but he’s vanished everywhere else.
There’s a good reason for that: it turns out the big story was, depending on how charitable you’re feeling, either dubiously sourced, a mistake, or an outright hoax. It fell to Betsy Woodruff at Slate to dig deeper and discover that on the fateful day, Scalise actually spoke to an innocent civic association, along with representatives from the local sheriff’s office and the American Red Cross. The unpleasant chaps from the Duke-linked “EURO” group had the room booked after the civic association was finished with it.
This is all based on the shifting recollections of a “longtime associate of David Duke” and neighbor of Steve Scalise named Kenny Knight, who is beginning to look like the unreliable single source for a too-good-to-check “scoop” the mainstream media’s “multiple layers of fact-checkers and editors” didn’t bother to investigate thoroughly before cudgeling an apologetic sound bite out of the Majority Whip.
[. . .]
But really, what was Scalise supposed to do? He opens his front door one morning, cup of coffee in hand, and sees a media bulldozer coming right at him.
[. . .]
It’s also not unreasonable for rank-and-file Republicans to be worried that their top leaders can be so easily bullied by the press. If this was a recon strike on the GOP brass to test their media defenses for the rest of Obama’s lame-duck term, the results were encouraging for Democrats.
[. . .]
CNN’s headline on the overall Republican response was, “GOP Leadership Stands By Scalise After White Supremacist Speech.” You don’t need a real story, if you can cook up headlines like that; the headlines become the story.
http://humanevents.com/2014/12/31/media-um-that-big-steve-scalise-story-probably-didnt-happen/
MEDIA: UM, THAT BIG STEVE SCALISE STORY PROBABLY DIDN’T HAPPEN, BUT HE’S STILL ‘EMBATTLED’ ANYWAY
By: John Hayward
12/31/2014 09:51 AM
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