Return of the Media's "Clinton Rules"

In the recent days following the election, we got to witness a media slobbering all over itself in an effort to best smear top Democrats.

ABC News' online site led with pieces on consecutive days citing an unnamed source(s) close to the Abramoff investigation as suggesting 7 or 8 Democrats and Harry Reid specifically as having received "corrupt" payments from clients of Jack Abramoff. ABC had no corroborative evidence and their source is most likely a person in Bush's DOJ, probably a Republican partisan who's a Ken Star or Robert Ray wanna be. ABC also omitted that, though long ongoing, there appears to be nothing in the ton of Abramoff docs released publicly that supports any of this.

Glenn Greenwald also posts a piece on the trashing of Nancy Pelosi coming from the beltway pundits, many proclaimed liberals but more accurately described as members of the entrenched media clique. As Greenwald shows, their natterings are on par with titilating junior high gossip.

Now the latest is CNN's piece coupling a large picture of John Edwards with the follwing headline: "Wal-Mart accuses ex-senator of cutting in line for PS3".

So what the hell happened? Did John Edwards cut in line at a Wal-Mart to get a PS3?

Well, not exactly. Here's Edwards' version:

"My wife, Elizabeth, wanted to get a PlayStation 3 for my young children. She mentioned it in front of one of my staff people," Edwards said. "That staff person mentioned it in front of a volunteer who said he would make an effort to get one. He was making an effort to go get one for himself.

"Elizabeth and I knew nothing about this. He feels terrible about this. He made a mistake, and he knows he should not have used my name," Edwards said.

Edwards said the volunteer was "a young kid" unaware of what he called flawed Wal-Mart policies. He called the Wal-Mart statement an effort to divert attention from its own problems.

And guess what? CNN has nothing that contradicts this statement. But Wal-Mart, whom Edwards has long criticized, put out a press release that falsely claimed Edwards cut in line. So what does responsible journalism at CNN call for? Running Wal-Mart's clearly misleading claim as its headline.

... and not to dis Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler, the title of this post could just as easily be "Return of the Gore Rules."