Is Breitbart ever going to get up the nerve to ask the NY Post for a correction?

Written by Eric Boehlert

Published

C'mon Andrew you can do it. Courage. Courage.

In the wake of James O'Keefe's New Orleans guilty plea, Breitbart's site is pulling down out of storage one of its old talking points and pretending it's a very big deal that when the O'Keefe story first broke in January some news outlets got a key fact wrong: O'Keefe was never charged with trying to wiretap, or bug, Sen. Mary Landrieu's phone.

Apparently that's the beset Team Breitbart can do following O'Keefe's embarrassing guilty plea and confronting the fact that the judge overseeing the case condemned O'Keefe's undercover actions as “unconscionable,” “nefarious,” and “potentially dangerous.”

But here's the evergreen problem with the correction tact: lots of right-wing sites got the exact same fact wrong about O'Keefe and the alleged wiretapping and bugging charges [emphasis added]:

-"Filmmaker who targeted ACORN arrested for trying to bug La. senator's office" (NY Post)

-"Feds Cuff ACORN 'Pimp' in Attempt to Bug Sen. Landrieu's Phones" (NRO's The Corner)

-"James O'Keefe Arrested for Attempting to Bug Senator Mary Landrieu's Offices?" (Ace of Spades)

-"ACORN Sting Man James O'Keefe Arrested for Allegedly Trying to Bug Mary Landrieu's Office." (The Lonely Conservative)

-"James O'Keefe arrested for attempting to bug Mary Landrieu's office" (Another Black Conservative)

Oh my, were they on the get-O'Keefe conspiracy, too?

So yeah, last winter you could detect the screaming hypocrisy of Breitbart whining about the press coverage over a single fact, yet while at the same time he remained stoically silent when right-wing sites made the exact same factual error.

But as I mentioned, the whole charade has been pulled out of the moth balls in the wake of the O'Keefe guilty plea and Breitbart's now calling for more O'Keefe-related corrections. But you know what would make those requests seem even slightly legitimate? If Breitbart would finally, after months of cowardly behavior, buck up and demand that the New York Post formally correct its egregious O'Keefe reporting when the newspaper recklessly claimed the activist tried to “bug” the senator's office.

Until Breitbart gets up the nerve to call out Rupert Murdoch, we'll continue to see this correction petition for what it is, more empty, right-wing posturing.