PrintNPR: "It's not my fault, man!"
Mike from Kennesaw, Georgia writes us about what he heard this morning on taxpayer—supported NPR:
This morning, NPR aired a story ("Coroner: No Evidence of Evacuee Murders", ) that smells like an excuse for its false reporting of horrific crimes in the Super Dome, including the so—called rape and murder of a seven year old girl. (NPR even had an "eyewitness" who reported seeing the body in a restroom with her throat cut.) This false story and others of many murders, rapes, living with dead bodies——yadda, yadda, yadda——were put to rest with an interview with the area coroner. After confirming that no body of a seven year old girl was ever found, and in fact, only seven deaths—not hundreds—occurred in the Super Dome, the coroner earned NPR's eternal gratitude by saying that it is easy to see how wild rumors would get started in such terrible conditions.
But that begs the question, why would NPR report unsubstantiated stories?
In addition to NPR, the coroner attempted to save face for those in the Dome, saying they were "hallucinating" not "lying." So NPR was reporting the ramblings of hallucinators as fact.
The only thing this report lacked to completely exonerate NPR and take the tarnish off its journalistic halo was a sound bite at the end of Bart Simpson saying, "It's not my fault, man!"
