NY Times ‘Needs an Eraser’ For Factually-Incorrect Walker Hit

In their shared zeal to elect Hillary Clinton president, the New York Times allowed columnist Gail Collins to falsely blame Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker for teacher layoffs that occurred the year before he became governor.  The column is titled “Scott Walker Need an Eraser,” and after being caught by New Media, two days later the Times finally erased the falsehood and added this correction to the bottom:

Correction: February 15, 2015

An earlier version of this column incorrectly stated that teacher layoffs in Milwaukee in 2010 happened because Gov. Scott Walker “cut state aid to education.” The layoffs were made by the city’s school system because of a budget shortfall, before Mr. Walker took office in 2011.

Although the main thrust of the Collins’ column surrounds this falsehood: “As well as the fact that those layoffs happened because Walker cut state aid to education,” the Times left the rest of the column in place. The truth, however, which the Times will never report, is that Walker’s budget proposals saved teachers’ jobs. Per The Weekly Standard:

The truth is that Walker’s reforms actually saved teachers’ jobs. Right before the 2012 Wisconsin recall election, Walker’s Democratic opponent Tom Barrett couldn’t name a single school that had been hurt by Walker’s policies. When Walker’s 2014 Democratic opponent Mary Burke was asked to name any schools hurt by Walker’s collective bargaining reform, she relayed an anecdote she’d heard secondhand about one school. Burke’s story didn’t check out, and the superintendent of that school wrote a letter telling Burke she didn’t know what she was talking about.

As I write this, Ayman Mohyeldin, the NBC reporter who called American Sniper Chris Kyle a racist spree-killer, is reporting on MSNBC. Meanwhile, on CNN, the woman anchoring is Carol Costello, the mean girl who asked all of America to laugh at audio of Bristol Palin reporting assault to the police.

The American media is on full display today. 

John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC