This is exactly what I was afraid of — one instance of bad reporting quickly gets picked up by those who don’t care about the truth, and a new right-wing meme emerges.
Yesterday, ABC News’ Jake Tapper misrepresented a quote by Bill Clinton to suggest that the former president believes “we have to slow down the economy” to address global warming. In fact, Clinton said just the opposite. On Fox News today, when asked about the ABC piece, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer correctly noted that Clinton had been quoted out of context. But while Krauthammer was speaking, Fox ran a chyron falsely claiming that Clinton said we “must slow economy” to “cut greenhouse gas emissions.” […]
This morning, Rush Limbaugh peddled the false ABC story, insisting that Clinton “suggested we deliberately hamper our economic standing in the world and cripple our economy for the sake of appeasing an unproven, scientifically flawed theory that has no basis in fact.”
It’s rare that Krauthammer takes the responsible course, but by appearing on Fox News, where the producers have an obvious political agenda, even when Krauthammer was telling viewers the truth, the network was still managing to mislead its audience.
The network was even more ridiculous last night.
During the January 31 edition of Fox News’ America’s Pulse, host E.D. Hill echoed a blog post by ABC’s Jake Tapper in falsely asserting that former President Bill Clinton said “we need to slow” the economy in order to combat global warming. Hill cropped Clinton’s comments to assert that Clinton said: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut our greenhouse gas emissions, because we’ve got to save the planet for our grandchildren.” But Clinton did not say that we “have to slow down our economy” to fight global warming.
Introducing the quote, Hill noted “fears the economy is slowing and a recession could be nearing” and pronounced Clinton’s statement “puzzling.” After playing the truncated version of Clinton’s quote, Hill asked Fox News contributor Charles Payne, “[W]hat would the results of slowing down the economy be?” Hill added: “You know, I was baffled by this, because when it seems Democrats and Republicans have finally united on one thing, and that is that our economy is slowing and we need to kick it into gear, Bill Clinton comes out and says, ‘No, we need to slow it.’ “
Oh my.
Once again, in case there’s any confusion here, this is what the former president actually said:
“And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich counties — would say, ‘OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ We could do that.
“But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world’s fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.”
And here’s the lede of Jake Tapper’s unfortunate piece:
In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”
At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? “Slow down our economy”?
By last night, Tapper had told the New York Times that he found Bill Clinton’s speech confusing. No, I don’t know why, either.
Regardless, the effect of the misleading ABC News report is regretful and predictable. One quote, wrenched from context, is now embraced as reality by conservatives with low standards.
It’s like Gore “inventing the Internet” all over again.