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The New York Times has admitted to falsely accusing tea party members of spitting and chanting racial slurs at members of the congressional Black Caucus during an anti-Obamacare rally held in the nations capital this past March. 
The accusation, made in a Political Times column about racism and generational differences, was published last Sunday, July 25th. In an official statement listed in today's "Corrections" section, The Times admitted to
"..erroneously linking one example of a racially charged statement to the Tea Party movement."
The Times retraction went on to say,
"While Tea Party supporters have been connected to a number of such statements, there is no evidence that epithets reportedly directed in March at Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, outside the Capitol, came from Tea Party members."
The accusations were first reported by major media outlets like the Associated Press and The Washington Post even though they did not have corroborating evidence to support the story. Other news stations followed suit, reporting the story as fact and creating a chain effect across the nation, yet, still there was no evidence to support the rumors.
Conservative pundit and blogger Andrew Breitbart even offered a $10,000 reward to the United Negro College Fund on his Big Journalism website to anyone with video evidence of the alleged event. Although not mentioned last week by the Times, Tea partiers were also accused at the same rally of shouting anti-gay epithets at the out-gay Democratic Congressman Barney Frank.
To this day, no one has come forward and the reward has now grown to $100,000. Click here to see the video for yourself.
In a response posted on Big Journalism today, Breitbart says the correction was long overdue, and that the apology should be the first of many from media outlets across the country. Not overly impressed with The Times, he also says the correction still implies that "something racially charged might have happened."
Breitbart also wrote the backtrack proved, "that Rep. Andre Carson lied when he told the AP that members of the Tea Party hurled the “N-word” 15 times during the March 20 health-care rally."
Here is an compete except from his Breitbart's column.
“It’s not enough because the Times correction is just the beginning. The same correction needs to come from every other major media outlet that blithely repeated this defamation, including the AP, theWashington Post, The Hill, and MSNBC – not just in their news columns, but in their editorials, op-ed and opinion columns and shows as well. Until then, there will be no closure, because the Tea Party will not stop in its pursuit of vindication until the same media effort that went into propagating this lie goes into dispelling it and giving the millions of Americans – 23% of whom are minorities, according to Gallup — their good name back.”
The accusation, made in a Political Times column about racism and generational differences, was published last Sunday, July 25th. In an official statement listed in today's "Corrections" section, The Times admitted to
"..erroneously linking one example of a racially charged statement to the Tea Party movement."
The Times retraction went on to say,
"While Tea Party supporters have been connected to a number of such statements, there is no evidence that epithets reportedly directed in March at Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, outside the Capitol, came from Tea Party members."
The accusations were first reported by major media outlets like the Associated Press and The Washington Post even though they did not have corroborating evidence to support the story. Other news stations followed suit, reporting the story as fact and creating a chain effect across the nation, yet, still there was no evidence to support the rumors.
Conservative pundit and blogger Andrew Breitbart even offered a $10,000 reward to the United Negro College Fund on his Big Journalism website to anyone with video evidence of the alleged event. Although not mentioned last week by the Times, Tea partiers were also accused at the same rally of shouting anti-gay epithets at the out-gay Democratic Congressman Barney Frank.
To this day, no one has come forward and the reward has now grown to $100,000. Click here to see the video for yourself.
In a response posted on Big Journalism today, Breitbart says the correction was long overdue, and that the apology should be the first of many from media outlets across the country. Not overly impressed with The Times, he also says the correction still implies that "something racially charged might have happened."
Breitbart also wrote the backtrack proved, "that Rep. Andre Carson lied when he told the AP that members of the Tea Party hurled the “N-word” 15 times during the March 20 health-care rally."
Here is an compete except from his Breitbart's column.
“It’s not enough because the Times correction is just the beginning. The same correction needs to come from every other major media outlet that blithely repeated this defamation, including the AP, theWashington Post, The Hill, and MSNBC – not just in their news columns, but in their editorials, op-ed and opinion columns and shows as well. Until then, there will be no closure, because the Tea Party will not stop in its pursuit of vindication until the same media effort that went into propagating this lie goes into dispelling it and giving the millions of Americans – 23% of whom are minorities, according to Gallup — their good name back.”
