CNN refuses to retract fake Chris Christie/Hurricane Sandy scandal story

 During the height of Chris Christie’s Bridgegate scandal CNN reported about the possibility of a burgeoning second scandal about to engulf the governor of New Jersey. CNN reported that the Federal government was investigating Chris Christie about the possible misuse of $25 million in Hurricane sandy funds:

“CNN has learned exclusively that a federal investigation will be launched into why money meant for Hurricane Sandy relief was used in a marketing campaign involving Christie’s family,”

  There is just one small problem with this story…..it isn’t quite true. It is true there was an audit but it turns out it was just a routine audit and nothing came from it. The agency conducting the audit released this statement:

“The Department granted a waiver to allow the State to use $25 million of its award on a marketing campaign to promote the Jersey Shore and encourage tourism,” the release read. “An audit was initiated in September 2013 to examine whether the State administered its Tourism Marketing Program in accordance with applicable departmental and Federal requirements. This is an audit and not an investigation of the procurement process.” The statement adds that audits of federal expenditures “are something that this office does routinely.”

  It appears as if CNN got its information from a rival of Chris Christie. One dirty trick deserves another I guess–you get back what you give out. Chris Christie used his position to punish a rival and one of his rivals countered with a dirty trick of his own. I guess this is politics as usual in New Jersey. 

  But this post in not meant to be about dirty politics in New Jersey but rather about the bias of CNN for the network appears not to have bothered to have done any investigating into this story before they took it to the air. It seems as if CNN should have been able to easily find out this was simply a routine audit if they had wanted to, but of course they did not want to. The network had the story it wanted and ran with it without doing the proper legwork.

  According to the article linked to above, CNN ran the story 14 times on the first day alone, but since it has become known that the story was a fake CNN hasn’t bothered to update the story or offer a retraction of the story. Why would they? The network got what it wanted, people will remember the Hurricane Sandy scandal but they will not remember it was not true because CNN has decided the best follow up is no follow up.

  CNN is not in the news reporting business, they are in the propaganda making business and in this case it looks like mission accomplished. Move along, nothing to see here…..