USA TODAY, Backpedaling.

Hey Folks.

You HAVE to love this article. USA Today has acknowledged that it cannot prove key elements of a blockbuster May 11 story in which it reported that several telecommunications companies, namely AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Corp. Bell South Corp., were handing over customer phone records to the National Security Agency.

Just Thursday, in a lengthy article and accompanying "note to our readers," the nation's largest-circulation newspaper said it could not confirm that BellSouth or Verizon contracted with the NSA, which is charged with intercepting and analyzing foreign communications to look for possible threats to U.S. national security. Here is the entire The Washington Post article.

USA Today Editor Ken Paulson said in an interview,

"We take every error seriously. This was obviously a big story. All we can do is set the record straight."

You see folks, this is why I call them Mass Media Drones. This is why Rush calls them the "Drive By Media". They lob, shoot, and attack, then go on to the next thing. If they get it wrong, or get CAUGHT making something up, they give you a little blurb and move on to the next screw up. If Mr. Paulson TRULY cared, he would make sure that NOTHING gets published without it being PROVEN accurate.

BellSouth continues to completely deny the article as accurate at all saying,

"As we have stated numerous times, the NSA never contacted BellSouth, and we never supplied customer calling records to the NSA," BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher wrote in an e-mail. "In addition we do not and have never had a contract with the NSA."

They are not backing off totally though. The USA Today is still trying to get you to believe that some of it’s article was true. But the threats from the telecommunication companies, made them print this "note to our readers". Not that they REALLY wanted to "Set the record striaght", but because they HAD to.

I said half joking, you want proof? Just checkout the number of corrections ANY given day at the NYT, or any MMD. If they truly wanted to print TRUTH, they would check out the FACTS before printing it.

The USA Today has a long way to go to catch up to the NYT, but they are getting there.
Peter