I hate to sit here and defend Al Sharpton, but I have to.  You see in the wake of the Michael Vick scandal he was quoted as saying:

If the police caught Brett Favre (a white quarterback for the Green Bay Packers) running a dolphin-fighting ring out of his pool, where dolphins with spears attached to their foreheads fought each other, would they bust him? Of course not,” Sharpton wrote Tuesday on his personal blog .

Ok.  that is clearly the most absurd thing ever.  I am no lover of Sharpton, and he has a history of absurdity, but that had to be bogus.

And it was:

MSNBC Duped By Blog Parody Site

What does a major news organization do on a big story when it looks for a lively quote?

Reporters will interview people, or, in this day and age, do an internet search. And then you can strike GOLD: that great QUOTE on a website that fits a story perfectly.

But there are danger signs on the cyberspace highway.

That’s because there are parody sites…and some of them look like REAL websites of the rich, famous and infamous. And some of them are so silly and laugh-out loud outrageous, snarky and downright dumb that they seem like they MUST be the real thing.

MSNBC found that out recently, when it quoted a GREAT QUOTE on the Michael Vick case by the Rev. Al Sharpton. Only it turned out not to be a quote by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Rather then sheepishly admit they got snookered, they ran for cover.

How did MSNBC explain it?

By running a correction saying the quoted Sharpton site was a “hoax.”

WRONG. Newsgroper is a supremely delicious parody site that anyone except someone who believes in the Easter Bunny will conclude is a parody — perfectly done. It’s sort of like a fake Huffington Post.

But rather than admit “we put that on the site without really checking the website source as a whole — sorry!” or “we made a mistake in not looking at the post a bit more carefully but mistakes do happen!” MSNBC’s website writer called it a “hoax” which implies Newsgroper set up to trick people.

…

But the reporter didn’t quite check out the site. So the CYA correction on  the piece calls the site a “hoax.”

The parody site responds:

One of Newsgroper’s editors, in an email to TMV, noted:

I wonder what finally tipped  off their crack investigative journalism unit:

1. The words “fake parody blogs” in the title bar of every page of our site

2. Our logo

3. Al Sharpton blogging on the same site as Lindsay Lohan, George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

4. Our about page www.newsgroper.com/about/

5. Al Sharpton referring to himself in his bio as a “Emancipation Proclamation enthusiast”

 Ok, people….journalism 101 here: Always check your sources. 

You would think they would know better after the CBS Memo gate debacle. 

Stop trying so hard to get the scoop and spend a few minutes being professional.

Fools.

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