The Media Research Center isn’t the only ConWeb outlet to hide the truth about a story tied to the Florida school shooting from its readers.
An Anonymously written Feb. 22 WND article recounted how “A teen survivor of the tragic Parkland, Florida, school shooting claims he turned down an invitation to participate in a CNN town hall Wednesday evening because the network gave him a list of ‘scripted questions’ to ask.” WND did note CNN’s denial of Haab’s claim, then added that “It wouldn’t be the first time CNN has been accused of featuring political plants at its town hall forums.”
The next day, WND got a comment from Chuck Norris, of all people, about Haab’s story:
Progressives are on the warpath to restrict free speech and guns, and they even tried it with Colton Haab. Thank God, Colton was not afraid to stand up to suppressors of free speech. Rather than suppress Colton’s freedoms and solutions, CNN should have elevated and highlighted them.
[…]Thank God there are still young men like Colton Haab who realize suppression in any form is just a return to life under the British Crown. And if we’re going to protect the children across this land, we’re going to have to call up the reserves and do it ourselves instead of waiting on Washington.
WND also stuck a reference to it into another Feb. 23 article, which noted that Haab “claims CNN wanted to censor his views at a town hall.”
Just one problem: Haab’s story isn’t true.
As we documented when the MRC’s Nicholas Fondacaro peddled the story, CNN has since released the full email exchange between it and Haab’s family, and it revealed that the emails released by Haab’s family to the media were altered to make it look like CNN look bad. Haab’s father has now conceded that he altered the CNN emails.
But like Fondacaro, WND has refused to report that CNN has been vindicated, apparently out of hatred of CNN. Shouldn’t a business that purports to be a “real news” operation, as WND’s Joseph Farah claims it is, want to do something about the fact that the story it published three articles about has been discredited? That’s not helping to change WND’s well-earned reputation for publishing fake news.
Likewise, we could also find no evidence that Norris has retracted his defense of Haab now that his story has been discredited. C’mon, Chuck, what’s the holdup?