All The News That's Fit To Invent

Digby takes a shot at the MSM, also known as the Freepers' PR machine.

In this instance you had a budding rightwing operative who sat with the Vice President's wife at the State of the Union address appearing with a group that hanged Jane Fonda in effigy in the middle of a peaceful protest march. The signs they held were violent, crude and purposefully provocative. Yet the mainstream media, in looking for some frisson of 60's street violence, reports it as if the protesters are the provacateurs. They had the story and they completely missed it.

He has more on Joshua Sparling, the poor veteran who was spit on -- except he wasn't -- and who also reportedly received a Christmas card from a child while in the hospital recovering from his wounds.

It also seems that Sparling's horrible Christmas card was actually sent by a white supremecist nutcase named Michael Crook. (Or at least he took credit for it.)

Sparling is a right nutjob front man, from all appearances. The problem, as Digby so cogently recounts, is that major outlets like NYT and WaPo are reporting these stories as though they were legitimate, even going back and re-editing them to make them sound better.

We have a real problem here.