ABC's Benghazi "bombshell" based on faked e-mail

I'm not a strong Obama partisan, but it's great seeing the right-wing media get caught with its Underoos down around its ankles like this.

ABC - not unlike CBS - has become little more than a stenographer for the lunatic Right lately. A few days ago, an "investigation" by ABC's Jon Karl revealed what was supposedly a BLOCKBUSTER, BOMBSHELL, SMOKING GUN that proved congressional Republicans' case in the Benghazi hearings. ABC's report was based on an e-mail supposedly sent by government security adviser Ben Rhodes. Websites that seriously analyzed ABC's report could see the network was distorting the story, but that was lost on the rest of the press.

Now it turns out ABC was even more full of bunk gas than it appeared: CNN's Jake Tapper now reports that the e-mail was fabricated. ABC reported that Rhodes's e-mail said:

"We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don't want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting."

But that's not what it said. Here's what the e-mail actually said:

"Sorry to be late to this discussion. We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.

"There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don't compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.

"We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies."

ABC didn't just report the wrong words. The words they did report actually have an entirely different meaning than the real e-mail. How did ABC make such a stupid mistake? It's because they were relying on some corrupt right-wing insider who "leaked" a fabricated e-mail to them.

If ABC was as professional as they claim to be, they wouldn't have just accepted the faked e-mail without questioning it. They would have dug deeper. But I don't think they wanted to. They wanted to report the first thing they could find that seemed to bolster Republican claims. In other words, ABC intentionally distorted the Benghazi story to benefit the GOP.

We have a press corpse that thinks a school district's 34-year-long pattern of violating IDEA isn't newsworthy, but a made-up e-mail designed to bring down the President and gut the aspirations of a possible future presidential candidate is. This is the state of the modern American media. Journalists should uncover real scandals - not amplify fake scandals that were ginned up by politicians. At least CNN still has enough integrity to bust ABC on this.

(Source: http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/14/cnn-exclusive-white-house-email-contradicts-benghazi-leaks)