Breitbart Duped by Krugman Bankruptcy — as Reported by Joke Website It Loves
Breitbart's "Big Journalism" website trumpeted a story it picked up early Monday morning about liberal Times pundit and Nobel-prize-winning economist Paul Krugman filing for bankruptcy. It would have been quite the story — were it not more satire from the site that Breitbart loves watching other outlets fall for.
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The story, which has since been unceremoniously deleted, was captured by the watchdog group Media Matters. The Breitbart article read, in part:
Paul Krugman, the economic darling of the left, has filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection, according to Boston.com. Krugman has been the leading advocate for increased deficit spending as the only solution to turn the US economy around. He believes that President Obama needs to be even bolder with continued trillion dollar stimulus programs driving our nation deeper and deeper into debt.
Apparently this Keynesian thing doesn't really work on the micro level.
That Boston.com reference presumably pointed to this story, clearly labelled as being from "Prudent Investor," not the Boston Globe, which runs Boston.com. That article copies content from the Daily Currant, an Onion-style satire website.
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It is a site Breitbart.com is quite familiar with. Less than a month ago, "Big Journalism" caught the Washington Post lifting satirical content from the site. After the Post issued a red-faced correction, Breitbart editor and big journalist John Nolte crowed:
There was only one problem: The story of Palin joining Al-Jazeera is, duh, 100% false. Parker fell for an "Onion"-style satire published at the parody website The Daily Currant.
There is one bright side for the Post. Imagine the blowback had Parker found the Currant's "big scoop" about Jerry Sandusky being considered for Pope even bigger news.
But never one to let facts get in the way of a good Narrative, the "we-meant-to-do-that" Post merely added a correction, changed the headline to “Sarah Palin tries to stay relevant,” scrubbed the Al-Jazeera references (the original post can be read here), and still ripped Palin for, uhm, being so desperate to stay relevant.
Yeah, hard to believe that the Post would only issue a correction and change the headline instead of deleting the article and pretending it never happened. If you're wondering, the Greek term for the Nolte comments above is "hubris"; the German word for Krugman's and the Post's emotions today, "Schadenfreude."
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To Breitbart.com's credit, it's been a full three days since the site reported as true an inaccurate story from somewhere else, though two of those days fell on a weekend.
