Don't Blame Us, Blame the Newspaper We Copied It Out Of

That's the title of a post by Mark Steyn when he gave me a shout out over my observations about the blame game. Mark noted: "It's their choice to copy blindly any slab of hooey appearing in the Post and Times that happens to suit their prejudices without checking it for themselves."

You can add the Associated Press to the growing list of blind copiers.

"WASHINGTON — In a Sept. 19 story about the community organizing group ACORN, The Associated Press, based on an account in The Washington Post, erroneously quoted a conservative journalist saying he targeted the organization for hidden-camera videos because its voter-registration drives bring minority voters to the polls.

The Washington Post on Tuesday printed a correction about the quote. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O'Keefe, did not specifically mention minorities, the newspaper said."

Notice how the AP blames the Washington Post for its error. Also note the AP based its correction on the Post's correction and not on its own investigation of the facts! Sadly, this passes for jounalism these days.

Update: More here from the Post repoter involved.