ABC earlier posted a memo that was supposedly leaked from someone in the White House. They did this on their political page “The Note”
Maybe leaks are going to be more common in the Tony Snow Era.
The man has not even started officially yet as White House press secretary, and already the tightness of the Andy Card days seems to be a thing of the past.
ABC News has exclusively obtained this undated memo from Snow to his new colleagues. It is not clear when it was written, but from the content, it must have been in the last few days. It was given to ABC News by a Republican who is not pleased with Snow’s hiring.
At publication time, calls to Snow, Bolten, and the White House press office were not returned
Raw Story, Huffington Post and a Daily Kos blogger made reports on this. I even had one ready to go until I checked out the reliable Raw Story to see if they had anything and boy did they:
Earlier today, RAW STORY linked to a story by ABC News which purported to be a memo from the new White House press secretary Tony Snow. ABC News has confirmed the memo was intended as satire, though no indication was made on the story.
An ABC spokesman confirmed the memo was satire in a response to an email query.
“The Note is our daily political newsletter, which is also available on our site. I often send out popular and original stories from our web site (not press releases),” ABC News Media Relations spokeswoman Megan Mollman said. “The memo was a satire.”
The Note occasionally provides satire pieces, though this was the first RAW STORY received from ABC that wasn’t real news. Some bloggers have picked up the memo as real.
Now here is what I find peculiar. I understand that “The Note” occasionally engages in satire but when they do they usually give some indication of this. They gave absolutely no indication on this post and that resulted in an inaccurate story being posted. This is a very immature and also unprofessional approach from a member of the mainstream media.
I wonder if we should ever take ABC News as truthful now? Perhaps next time they say “a hurricane is coming” or issue an Amber Alert then we should wonder if it is once again “satire”. While they are at it, why don’t they come up with some new headlines like “Bush Caught With Eight Ball of Coke” or “Cheney Peppering Faces Of Gitmo Detainees”?
This really was a tasteless act on the part of ABC and their credibility is now also gone. I do satire pieces from time to time but I also have a disclaimer about those pieces so people do not go out and think they are “true stories”. Good one ABC but in the end the joke is now on you.