Doc Mercer
EOG Master
By Craig Crawford | March 29, 2009 2:00 PM
It's not that unconfirmed gossip about Vice President Joe Biden's daughter leads to anything of public importance.
But for a bit of weekend sport -- and as a cautionary tale for future stories that do matter -- it's worth tracking how the gossip merchants ply their trumped-up stories into the mainstream.
Look at how the New York Daily News today takes the Biden story to the next unconfirmed level, following the New York Post's pure speculation (discussed in my last post).
Even though The Post hedged on whether it was really Biden's 27-year-old daughter, Ashley, in a video tape showing a woman ingesting cocaine, the Daily News in its second paragraph drops the qualifiers without adding any confirmations and breathlessly reports on "the shocking video of Ashley Biden." Although the Daily News later in the story The Daily News claims that the White House is in "turmoil."
It's not that unconfirmed gossip about Vice President Joe Biden's daughter leads to anything of public importance.
But for a bit of weekend sport -- and as a cautionary tale for future stories that do matter -- it's worth tracking how the gossip merchants ply their trumped-up stories into the mainstream.
Look at how the New York Daily News today takes the Biden story to the next unconfirmed level, following the New York Post's pure speculation (discussed in my last post).
Even though The Post hedged on whether it was really Biden's 27-year-old daughter, Ashley, in a video tape showing a woman ingesting cocaine, the Daily News in its second paragraph drops the qualifiers without adding any confirmations and breathlessly reports on "the shocking video of Ashley Biden." Although the Daily News later in the story The Daily News claims that the White House is in "turmoil."
UPDATE 11:00 PM EST__Later on Sunday the Daily News reported that the lawyer for the man who was trying to sell the video "ditched his client" and the newspaper then pulled back to describing the tape as showing Ashley "purportedly snorting cocaine." Still, the article presumes that Biden's daughter is the woman in the video, despite any confirmation of that claim.
In 24 hours, a story about a woman in a videotape who "resembles" Ashley (according to the NY Post) becomes "the shocking video of Ashley Biden" (Daily News). And yet neither paper even tries to prove it.
