Kerry didn't say that I word!

From MSNBC online:

• June 7, 2005 9:15 a.m. ET
Kerry on impeachment
(Keith Olbermann)
SECAUCUS —

Last Wednesday, Senator John Kerry told the editorial board of the newspaper in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the "Standard-Times," that he was amazed at the lack of American media coverage of the so-called "Downing Street Memo" — notes of a July, 2002 British cabinet meeting that suggested the U.S. was making all the evidence fit a pre-planned invasion of Iraq.
The words of the Democrats' 2004 standard-bearer?: "When I go back (to Washington) on Monday, I am going to raise the issue. I think (the memo) is a stunning, unbelievably simple and understandable statement of the truth..."

Now, let's play Blogosphere-Telephone with that statement.

By Saturday, those quotes, and the original New Bedford story, had been transmuted by a series of foreign and conservative websites into an article that included the line: "Failed presidential candidate Kerry advised that he will begin the presentation of his case for President Bush's impeachment to Congress, on Monday."

Blogs and websites pulsated with the news: Kerry was going to call for the impeachment of President Bush! My inbox pulsated with the missives of angry conservatives ("you're covering up Kerry's traitorous comment") and angry liberals ("corporate lapdog! Why didn't you cover this? Do your job!").

Once again, the first law of the Non-Mainstream Media was being ignored. Be suspicious of everything you read on the internet, not just those things with which you most agree, or about which you live in the greatest fear.

The Senator's office told "Countdown" last night that he never said anything about impeachment and asked our reporter where he'd read that line. The answer was: the websites of NewsMax and Al-Jazeera.
The story originated — on Al-Jazeera.

The New Bedford newspaper story, exactly 746 words long, literally does not include the words impeach, or impeachment.

If this detail is still relevant in these super-heated political times, the story is not true. But at places as disparate as Al-Jazeera and NewsMax, they wanted it to be.

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