Article: KURTZ BECOMING AN UNRELIABLE SOURCE: Howard Owes Maher An Apology

Howard, Shame, shame, shame!!!!! Reliable Sources? Bill O'Reilly might as well call his show the No-Spin Factor. You feature a debate on Ann Coulter's hate spew and highlight the fact that many networks played Coulter's comment on GMA where she advanced the idea that John Edwards be shot in a terrorist assassination plot, but that they did not play the entire context of her quote. Well, Howard, making sure I am reliable, here's Ann's full quote...

"But about the same time, you know, Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack. So I've learned my lesson. If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

See. Then we would have known, as your Townhall.com reliably sourced guest said, that liberals like Maher did the same thing and that, in fact, networks were trying to make what Coulter say, seem even worse. Damn you liberal media. Which might be true, if not for one thing. It was a lie. Maher didn't say the same thing. Not even close. Believe it or not, Ann lied. I know you don't have the Factor's crack research team to check out every source, reliably, so perhaps I could invest a good two seconds out of my life to help you out. Here's the transcript from what Bill actually said. Check out his March 3, 2007 show. See if you can find what Ann said he said anywhere in there. So why in the world should the networks run the first half of Ann's quote when her reference to Maher was a lie? In the least, when you played the complete GMA/Coulter quote, you should have brought up that she had herself mangled Maher's comments only so that she could spew her personal and hateful venom yet make it appear that "everyone is doing it." Amazing, huh? The show meant to watchdog over the reliability in the media, didn't. Instead you fed into the same distortion of events the Right's broadcast Lords of Loud do that always seems to attain some kind of "other half of the truth" credibility. Like Gore said he invented the Internet or that Kerry was a coward. That Maher dealt with Coulter's allegation with when it was first bandied about by the Right's Noise Machine in March should have been enough not to let it fly again. But repeating a lie never seems to hurt on the Right, especially when the so-called liberal media at CNN allows it free reign. Best, A Fan of Reliable Sources, If They're Actually Reliable, Steve www.greatfailure.com