Post by RS Davis on Apr 28, 2004 19:09:26 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]Matt Welch Wrote:[/glow] On November 30, 1999, Al Gore told a high school class in New Hampshire about how, 20 years earlier, a girl their age had informed his congressional office about toxic waste problems in her hometown of Toone, Tennessee. The resulting Capitol Hill hearings, which Gore sponsored, also investigated a much more famous polluted area of upstate New York called Love Canal. "Toone, Tennessee -- that was the one that you didn’t hear of," the then-vice president told the Granite State students. "But that was the one that started it all."
The next day, both The Washington Post and The New York Times changed the wording of that last quote, replacing "But that" with "I," making it seem as though Gore was trying to take credit for discovering the Love Canal disaster. Hours later, Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson issued a press release blasting Gore for his "pattern of phoniness" while mutating the quote still further: "I was the one who started it all," the alleged remark now read.
Even though the Times and Post both ended up running corrections more than a week later (under duress from the outraged high schoolers), and several media critics eventually deconstructed the tale, the story of Al Gore "discovering" the Love Canal became a fixture in Campaign 2000, to be repeated in several hundred newspapers and on every major news network in America.
The next day, both The Washington Post and The New York Times changed the wording of that last quote, replacing "But that" with "I," making it seem as though Gore was trying to take credit for discovering the Love Canal disaster. Hours later, Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson issued a press release blasting Gore for his "pattern of phoniness" while mutating the quote still further: "I was the one who started it all," the alleged remark now read.
Even though the Times and Post both ended up running corrections more than a week later (under duress from the outraged high schoolers), and several media critics eventually deconstructed the tale, the story of Al Gore "discovering" the Love Canal became a fixture in Campaign 2000, to be repeated in several hundred newspapers and on every major news network in America.
