Monday, October 04, 2004

Fake Kerry quotes at FOX and NY Times

A flurry of reports about supposed Kerry statements that it turns out were either just made up or heard second or third hand and never checked.

First, Josh Marshall catches a story on FOX News that contains quotes from Kerry like "
Didn't my nails and cuticles look great?" Did Kerry really say things like that? Nope--the quotes were made up as a joke by the FOX reporter covering the Kerry campaign, and 'accidentally' posted on the FOX News website before being retracted. What will happen to the reporter--will he be fired or maybe reassigned to some other beat? FOX isn't saying.

Second, scroll down to the Updates on today's Daily Howler, where Maureen Dowd and her colleagues at the NY Times are taken to task for repeatedly using a quote from Kerry--"Who among us does not like NASCAR"--that Kerry never said. The original post from the Howler is overly long and frenzied, but contains more details about how Dowd got the quote. Though the NYT has probably known for some time that the quote is false, they have never apologized or issued a retraction.

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