Did Media Matters lie in its published “timeline”? Eric Boehlert is hanging his hat on the claim that foxnews.com published a report on the Sherrod video before she resigned, and that online report influenced the decision to fire her. Media Matters timeline places that foxnews.com report after Breitbart’s video (11:18 am) and before a Jim Hoft blog post (12:13 pm). But they don’t document when the foxnews.com article was actually published. No timestamp.
Here’s the interesting thing. The article in question was not removed from foxnews.com. It was simply updated with new information as it came in. The current version of the article is still in the same place, including the 7/19 date in the URL. What’s more, all the comments are there, dating all the way back to the first version of the piece from 7/19. And when you jump to the earliest comments, the first one is timestamped Monday July 19…at 6:22 pm. Since Sherrod’s firing wasn’t made public until later that evening, these comments are clearly from the first version of the post.
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