Oliver Willis

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Your “liberal media” has once again carried water for the right wing smear machine, in this instance Michael Steele’s fabricated story about being pelted with oreos, in a blatant play for racial sympathy by a black candidate who continues to do everything in his power to screw over black Americans.

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A LexisNexis search shows that only people directly connected to the Republican Party have ever been quoted attesting to the accuracy of any version of the Oreo story.

That hasn t stopped The Washington Times, The Washington Post, The Sun, the (London) Daily Telegraph, the Associated Press, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, and this paper, among others, from reporting as fact, without transparent sourcing or attribution, some version of the incident over the years.

Of the two newspapers that have most frequently discussed the event, the Sun s reporting has been largely circumspect, typically reporting the incident as a claim made by Republicans. The Washington Times, by contrast, has more freely propagated the most incendiary version of the incident, repeatedly reporting as a given fact that Steele was  pelted by cookies at the debate.

Milking a story for all it’s worth, media uncritically report crumbling allegation that Democrats threw Oreos at Steele

A Media Matters for America review of media coverage of the alleged Oreo-throwing incident has revealed little evidence to substantiate the claims originally advanced by Ehrlich, Steele, and Schurick. Reporting on the issue has varied greatly, giving wildly different accounts of the story, but a brief history of the Oreo-throwing legend demonstrates how this baseless allegation made the transition from partisan talking point to a “fact” reported in the media.