More Proof That Cable "News" Is A Misnomer

If anybody had any lingering questions about whether cable news was credible or not, a couple of good folks over at dailykos have helped to push the answer further into the not column. First we get the back story from kos diarist Setrak on who exactly started the "Rahm Emanuel talked with Rod Blagojevich 21 times" rumor.

Michael Sneed, who is female, claimed that Rahm Emanuel made 21 separate phone calls to Blagojevich. It was all unsourced, thrown out there, and believed until the Obama-camp's internal report was leaked/released.

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Amongst memorable moments with Michael Sneed's reporting includes;
Wrongly identifying the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre as an "unnamed Chinese national".

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Supporting Sarah Palin.

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Oh, and did you know that Michael Sneed herself is mentioned in the complaint against Blagojevich? Thanks to Gawker, you can see for yourself without going through the actual complaint. Is it any coincidence that there are more allegations of Michael Sneed putting lies out into the public?

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Michael Sneed is a local gossip columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. And she's the latest journalist to be steamrolled by Chicago's US attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald—the same prosecutor who sent fallen Times reporter Judy Miller to jail! But Sneed won't have to go to court to try to keep her sources secret, because they're named right in the complaint against corrupt governor Rod Blagojevich. You see, Sneed was allegedly the guv's go-to reporter for planting fake rumors designed to help his scheme to extort money in exchange for Obama's replacement in the Senate. Oh, this one is good.

Now with all this wealth of information on how sorry of a journalist Micheal Sneed is you would think that cable news shows would have taken the unsourced declaration that Rahm Emanuel was caught on FBI wiretaps talking to Rod Blagojevich 21 times with a grain of salt. And you would be wrong. Jed Lewison also from dailykos documents the atrocities in this video retrospective.





So not only did they not take it with a grain of salt, they ran with the story like it was set in stone. Just remember that the next time you are watching any cable "news" show and understand that they are more of a bastion of sensationalism than a source of credible news