Another reason not to trust the British press (or Drudge)

Written by Eric Boehlert

Published

The London dailies have been having a field day covering the Michelle Obama vacation story and in the process have been displaying their often non-existent standards for journalism when it comes to reporting on Democrats (i.e. they make stuff up), and also for their ability to feed the U.S.'s right-wing noise machine. (We've detailed this symbiotic relationship many times in the past.)

Behold this priceless nugget from London's Daily Mail, which was promptly trumpeted by The Drudge Report [emphasis added]t:

The lunch is Mrs Obama's last engagement in Spain before flying home to Washington DC, where she has come under fire for her lavish break on the Costa del Sol with 40 friends, which has been estimated at costing U.S. taxpayers £50,000 a day.

Voila! Drudge headline:

Trip costing U.S. taxpayers $75K a day ...

You see, Drudge simply did the currency conversion and announced the trip was costing you and me $75K per-day. How does Drudge know that? Because the Daily Mail said so. And how does the Daily Mail know that? We have no idea because there's zero reporting in the Daily Mail article to substantiate the $75,000 claim.

Zero. As in none.

The number appears to have bee plucked out of thin air. But that's good enough for the GOP Noise Machine because hey, it appeared in the British press, so it gets whipped around the echo chamber as fact.

UPDATED: If you read between the Daily Mail lines the paper seems to be suggesting that the biggest part of the reported $75,000 per-day cost comes from Secret Service. Do I even have to explain how pointless that critique is?

Meaning, the Secret Service gets paid to protect the First Lady no matter where she is. It's not like if she had vacationed in Georgia or Montana those agents wouldn't be on the clock. They get paid to protect her 24/7. That she's in Spain is pretty much besides the point. But some in the press are trying to suggest the Spain security costs represent money that never would've been spent if Obama had vacationed in America.

This 'debate' is really, really dumb.