No, Sarah Palin Is Not Going to Al Jazeera — but the Washington Post Thought So
Journalists all around the country do not want to be The Washington Post's Suzi Parker, a blogger who couldn't tell satire from reality and erroneously reported that Sarah Palin was headed to Al Jazeera America. The Post added this ugly, bold, and altogether embarrassing correction at the top of Parker's blog post this afternoon, referring to her only as "the blogger":
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly reported that Sarah Palin had signed on as a contributor to the Al Jazeera America news network. The blogger cited a report on the Daily Currant Web site as the basis for that information without realizing that the piece was satirical.
Oof. What hurts is that the false Palin-Al Jazeera "scoop" was one of the big kernels of Parker's piece — that Palin's star is fading and the Tea Party darling was getting desperate. But what possibly hurts more is that Parker didn't realize this quote, complete with "Al-JaJizzraa," was a fake, by way of the Onion-style site The Daily Currant:
“As you all know, I’m not a big fan of newspapers, journalists, news anchors and the liberal media in general,” Palin said. “But I met with the folks at Al-JaJizzraa (sic) and they told me they reach millions of devoutly religious people who don’t watch CBS or CNN. That tells me they don’t have a liberal bias.”
Parker is getting speared by conservatives for falling for this, and sites like Glenn Beck's Blaze are parlaying it into a dig against all "Mainstream Media." We're just gonna call it a day and read The Onion now. They're good at this sort of thing.
