If you missed the story late last week, Breitbart.com editor
at large Ben Shapiro broke a story indicating Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel took money from
a group called "Friends of Hamas.”
The “scoop” was picked up by FOX News and reported as fact.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, there is no group called Friends of Hamas
and the story was blown up from a joke made by someone to a GOP source. What’s
interesting in the aftermath is that a) Shapiro and Breitbart.com reject the
idea that they did anything wrong by publishing the story as an allegation, and
b) FOX News had the sketchy editor Shapiro on a show acting as a knowledgeable
Washington pundit.
What
the Media Matters article fails to point out is that in the conservative media
bubble, news and propaganda are the same thing. What we consider news;
reasonably objective stories based on verifiable facts, is not what the
conservatives consider news. For them, it’s only news if it embarrasses Obama, makes
liberals look bad or makes America look good. Facts are not part of that
equation. Studies have clearly shown that FOX News viewers are the least
well-informed consumers of television news. So it should come as little
surprise that Shapiro sees nothing wrong with his unfounded smear of Hagel.
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