"Just because they say it doesn't make it true"

Yesterday, on the Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer was pushing Murtha on the Administration's dire predictions about what would happen if the US withdrew troops from Iraq. Murtha responded, "Just because they say it doesn't make it true." Such a simple concept, but hard for the media to grasp.

Given the Bush administration's track record, if they say it, it probably isn't true. Yet, media constantly take their words as gospel. How many lies does the White House have to tell before the media holds them accountable? Or before reporters do some basic fact checking to see if their statements match what reality?

One news organization, Knight Ridder, is actually holding White House officials accountable to their words according to Dan Froomkin's column today:

William Douglas of Knight Ridder Newspapers today maintains his bureau's tradition of consistently pushing back on mischaracterizations in White House speeches, rather than just repeating them.

"Cheney laid out the administration's defense of the war again -- and again conflated the war with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, even though investigative commissions have concluded that there was no connection between them and Saddam Hussein," Douglas writes.

He quotes Cheney:

"(T)hey attacked us on 9/11 here in the homeland, killing 3,000 people. Now they are making a stand in Iraq. . . . '

"Would the United States . . . be better off, or worse off, with Zarqawi, bin Laden and Zawahiri in control of Iraq?'

" . . . A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be a victory for the terrorists."

Then Douglas writes: "But the war in Iraq isn't primarily with terrorists. Cheney didn't note that Iraq's insurgency rises primarily from ethnic and sectarian tensions among Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Kurds, rejection of U.S.-led occupation forces, and loyalists to Saddam and his once-dominant Baath Party."

Fact checking Bush, Cheney, Rove, McClellan and the rest of that gang should be the norm, not the exception. It's easier...and lazier...to just regurgitate what they say rather than do real reporting. The White House must just laugh at how easy it is to manipulate the MSM.