Obama’s ‘Dewey Beats Truman’ Headline
Obama holds up "MANDATE STRUCK DOWN" headline from CNN in "DEWEY BEATS TRUMAN" photoshop
So, this is making the rounds:
For those of you who aren’t news junkies, CNN did in fact run that headline, which was re-tweeted around the world like crazy for, oh, three minutes before the correct ruling came out and confused everyone.
I fully get the desire to be first, even by a couple of minutes. But it’s better to get it right.
Apparently Fox News did the same, but I don’t have a screenshot.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogstv/54395315-63/cnn-fox-news-obamacare.html.csp
Fox had a huge “NoBama Care” banner running this morning.
Here’s the Fox News shot:
http://twitpic.com/a1hl4a
In CNN’s defense (and I’m not normally one to defend them), the on-the-scene anchor stated, “…the Individual Mandate is not a valid mandate of the Commerce Clause,” which was entirely accurate… and then promptly speculated that it seemed like that meant the mandate was being struck down. Enter Wolf Blitzer with all of the intellectual firepower he was showing on his Jeopardy appearance immediately removing all of the hedges of “it appears” or “seems to be” and the like and stating as fact that the mandate had been struck down.
@Kit Smith:
He’s one of those guys that the saying “better to keep silent and be assumed a fool then open it and remove all doubt” was made for. I respected him more when he was just a very dry newsman.