The Rest Of The Story…

Do you remember the headlines in all the newspapers and on the TV new programs… “IRS Targets Tea Party!” well the rest of the story appeared last week on the back pages of the newspapers.

How the media outrageously blew the IRS scandal: A full accounting
Almost everything "reported" about the big Obama scandal was wrong, and no one has been held to account (UPDATED)
Salon
By Alex Seitz-Wald
July 8, 2013

The first few days of the IRS scandal that would consume Washington for weeks went like this: Conservatives were indignant, the media was outraged, the president had to respond, his allies turned on him … and only then, the Treasury Department’s inspector general released the actual report that had sparked the whole controversy — in that order. It’s a fitting microcosm of the entire saga, which has gone from legacy-tarnishing catastrophe to historical footnote in the intervening six weeks, and a textbook example of how the scandal narrative can dominate Washington and cable news even when there is no actual scandal
[…]
And they would have gotten away with it, too, had their narrative had the benefit of being true. But now, almost two months later, we know that in fact the IRS targeted lots of different kinds of groups, not just conservative ones; that the only organizations whose tax-exempt statuses were actually denied were progressive ones; that many of the targeted conservative groups legitimately crossed the line; that the IG’s report was limited to only Tea Party groups at congressional Republicans’ request; and that the White House was in no way involved in the targeting and didn’t even know about it until shortly before the public did.

Wait! Wait, what was that? The Republicans asked them to only investigate conservative groups… no, the Republicans would never do anything like that. And of course the media would have not just wanted a sensation to sell more advertising; they would have researched it and not just taken the Republican’s word on it.