It is now reported by the Washington FBI office that the Navy Yard shooter did not use an AR-15 rifle in his rampage.
The mainstream media spent all day yesterday reporting bad information on this event, including releasing the name of a totally innocent Navy employee as the shooter.
It’s understandable that early reports on a tragic event like this are often filled with errors, rumors and bad information. You expect a responsible media organization to make corrections and print retractions.
But what about an entire opinion column that was based on bad information? What should a responsible media organization do in that event?
The New York Daily News was faced with just such a question today. Columnist Mike Lupica wrote his column based on the fallacy that Alexis had used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. It’s the central theme of the entire text.
Here is the ‘correction’ from the Daily New’s editors that now appears at the top of the column:
Why yes, so let’s just leave this entire column up anyway even though we now know it’s based on wrong information. It’s more important to keep hammering those evil AR-15 rifles than it is to be accurate in our journalism. Thanks, NY Daily News, for another example of how MSM journalists care more about the narratives they are eager to push than the actual facts of the stories they are writing about.
And now the ultimate irony, courtesy of Charles C. W. Cooke:
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