Mollie Hemingway: Politico Admits Fabricating A Hit Piece On Ben Carson

Conservative Icon Rush Limbaugh said during his top-rated talk show that the news media are guilty of fabricating negative stories about the retired pediatric neurosurgeon’s White House bid and thus making Dr. Ben Carson a victim of an “electronic lynching.”  He also claims Politico perpetrated an “assassination  attempt” against the staunchly conservative Republican.  

Meanwhile, journalist Mollie Hemingway, writing for The Federalist, states:   “Politico‘s Kyle Cheney admitted that he fabricated a negative story about Ben Carson. At least, according to his own standards, he admitted the grievous journalistic sin.”

In a story published early on Friday, Politico’s Kyle Cheney authored a piece headlined “Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship” with a subhead “Carson’s campaign on Friday conceded that a central point in his inspirational personal story did not occur as he previously described.”  

“Unfortunately, the editors at Politico kept re-editing the story and re-posting it on the Internet. And thanks to their partners at other news outlets — a known hotbed of Democratic Party sycophants — the story has become so confusing and the language so parsed that it takes an intelligence analyst to decipher the language,” said political strategist and former corruption investigator Mike Baker.

There were at least five major problems with the story, according to Ms. Hemingway:

• The headline was completely false
• The subhead was also completely false
• The opening paragraph was false, False, FALSE
• The substance of the piece was missing key exonerating information
• The article demonstrated confusion about service academy admissions and benefits

Mollie Hemingway’s full news story is here.