Citing Satire as "Reporting," Raw Story Implies Iowa Pro-Hillary Shenanigans

Hillary at the 2015 Iowa Fair / Phil Roeder, CC BY 2.0

Raw Story is the Democrats’ answer to Breitbart.  Anything you see from them needs to be scrutinized carefully and fact-checked thoroughly.  Fail to, and you’ll share, repost, or cite at your own risk.

Case in point: THIS Raw Story piece is the WORST.  The author, in building a case that pro-Hillary shenanigans were afoot in the Iowa caucuses, was incredibly sloppy in his sourcing and analysis.  I’m not sure whether this resulted from his desire to prove his thesis, or the perverse incentives of “writing at the speed of the Internet” resulting in haphazard work, or both.  Just in case it’s primarily due to an unusual series of mistakes – and we’ve all made them – I’ll simply refer to him here as RS Travis.

RS Travis cites an Iowa blog for saying the EXACT OPPOSITE of what it says.  He also cites a HuffPo satire piece as “reporting,” and paints a couple of fairly even-handed Iowa newspaper editorials as being much more dramatic and sensational than they really were.   All in all, lovely. ;)

Misciting a one-year old source

RS Travis: 

The blog BleedingHeartland has been raising concerns that McGuire, who has been involved in Iowa politics for more than 20 years, is manipulating the state’s Democratic Party to favor Clinton over her challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT).

Uh, that’s not what she said.  The Bleeding Heartland post he linked to was from one year ago, when McGuire was first elected Chair - the post and all updates are from January 2015: