How The Press Has Exaggerated Al Gore's Exaggerations

[lligrd]

Really interesting article going in to detail about how Gore has been misquoted by the Press (and Tweety).


He's No Pinocchio
How the press has exaggerated Al Gore's exaggerations.
By Robert Parry

Al Gore may come across to many Americans as a smart guy with lots of experience and a clunky personal style. But the national news media have repeatedly portrayed the vice president in a much more sinister light: as a willful liar who may even live in a world of his own delusions.

<snip>

But an examination of dozens of these articles, which purport to detail the chief cases of Gore's exaggerations and lies, finds journalists often engaging in their own exaggerations or even publishing outright falsehoods about Gore.

<snip>

But the Love Canal flap started when The Washington Post and The New York Times misquoted Gore on a key point and cropped out the context of another sentence to give readers a false impression of what he meant. The error was then exploited by national Republicans and amplified endlessly by the rest of the news media, even after the Post and Times filed grudging corrections.

<snip>

The media's treatment of the Internet comment followed a similar course. Gore's statement may have been poorly phrased, but its intent was clear: He was trying to say that he worked in Congress to help develop the Internet. Gore wasn't claiming to have "invented" the Internet or to have been the "father of the Internet," as many journalists have asserted.

link: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/0004.parry.html