Because the he said/she said is so much fun between the left-wing BuzzFeed and the left-wing Michael Moore, an important fact has been overlooked: Initially, BuzzFeed apparently invented anonymous sources in its rush to protect Obama’s government from the filmmaker.
In her original story, BuzzFeed reporter Tessa Stuart based her reporting on “sources” at LAX. She did this twice, once in the introduction highlighted at the very top of the piece and in the actual article’s first sentence.
Stuart later went back and corrected the story, admitting she had only one source.
According to the Huffington Post’s Danny Shea, Stuart was “forced” to issue this correction:
Stuart wrote a story Monday claiming that Michael Moore had overhyped the recent detention of Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat at LAX as an attempt to seek publicity for Burnat’s Oscar-nominated documentary, “5 Broken Cameras.” Her story was based on a single government source, and she was forced to issue a correction after initially presenting it as based on multiple sources.
How in the world do you go from having a single anonymous source to giving off the impression, twice, that you have more than one. Moreover, if HuffPo’s reporting is correct, BuzzFeed only set the record straight after being caught.
From the way the story is shaping up today, it looks as though one outcome could be that both BuzzFeed and Moore are busted telling falsehoods.
Pass the popcorn.
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