I'm asking Kossacks to get on the email horn and do some loud complaining.
Here's why:
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel said it first: running this about Murtha on Sunday:
American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran, U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said to a crowd of more than 200 in North Miami Saturday afternoon.
UPDATE: I know ThinkProgress is reporting this and that the Sun-Sentinel is retracting. My point is we need to complain about the others, about O'Reilly, Brit Hume, Tucker Carlson and the rest. I've seen no evidence that THEY intend to retract or apologize.
Of course Fox picked right up on that,
O'Reilly said:
Murtha has lost all perspective and did months ago, but his message is firmly entrenched in America's far-left precincts. ... [T]hat kind of extreme thinking, based on little evidence, by the way, is putting all Americans in danger.
And Newt Gingrich was quoted on Fox News saying:
For an American congressman to say that is beyond any acceptable behavior, and I would hope the Congress would move to censure him.
And Brit Hume chimed in with:
Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha, who has called for the immediate redeployment of U.S. troops in Iraq to Okinawa, Japan, now says the American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran.
And Tucker Carlson:
What is really going on here, and you know it as well as I, is that Jack Murtha has been intoxicated by the amount of publicity that he has gotten from his anti-war crusade, and he has become progressively more unreasonable, progressively more left-wing as the days go on, and he is in the thrall of people who, I think, have hostility towards the United States.
Of course Drudge and the Right wing blogosphere is all over it too.
Turns out the South Florida Sun-Sentinel didn't have it quite right. In fact, Murtha was commenting on a two-week old Pew poll that found worldwide, people see the U.S. as the biggest threat to world peace. Melissa Sanchez of the Miami Herald, who was actually at Murtha's speech, has confirmed that Murtha's statement has been falsely reported. "It was not so much his own conjecture," she said, "but a conclusion drawn from polls in various countries."
So, now (after a complaint from Murtha's office) Gail Bulfin of the Sun-Sen has admitted the paper's "error" and supposedly the South Florida Sun-Sentinel is going to run a retraction tomorrow. (All this is being reported by ThinkProgress), but there's not any evidence floating around indicating that Bill or Brit or Newt are going to apologize for their conjecture...
I think we should flood them all with emails, insisting they do, not only because what they said was wrong, but in order to interfere with the noise machine of the Right. They like to repeat the rumor and then even if the source has to acknowledge the error, the message is out, the commentators have had their field day and moved on. They need to be called on their echo-chamber game, and I think people here at DKos should ask them (respectfully and without hostility) to do correct their mistatements and apologize to Congressman Murtha, if for no other reason than they say they support the military and Congressman Murtha is a distinguished Vietnam Veteran who is still serving his country. They should be outraged at his treatment, not participating in it. The attacks on Murtha are entirely unAmerican.
Here are the relevant email addresses:
Brit Hume, brit.hume@foxnews.com
Fox News, Comments, comments@foxnews.com
Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, oreilly@foxnews.com
TUCKER@MSNBC.COM
I think Keith Olbermann should be alerted too:
MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, countdown@msnbc.com