At Cox Newspapers, they took this story seriously

On his show, Rush Limbaugh is highlighting the ridiculousness of a Cox Newspapers story on drilling in the Gulf. The opening paragraph states:

Despite the warnings of Dick Cheney, George Will, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, the Russians are not drilling for oil off Cuba. Neither are the Chinese. In fact, no one — not even Cuba — is drilling for oil off Cuba.

The reporter, Christine Stapleton, goes through her list of villians, Rush, Cheney, and Fox News, and declares them all wrong. Then, if you read to the fourth paragraph, she admits that

Companies from at least 10 other countries, including Russia and China, are negotiating or already have signed lease deals to drill off Cuba.

That sentence might call for an Emily Litella moment. But, apparently reporter Stapleton is trying to make a Clintonesque distinction between "is drilling" and "has signed a lease deal to drill" and using that distinction to declare her chosen villains wrong. As Bill Clinton, the moral compass of the Democratic party, once said. "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

If newspapers had editors, they would catch these things before they were published.

PREVIOUSLY on news reporters and their fantasy worlds:
•How reporters avoid reality
•News reporters and the liberal echo chamber in action
•Salon has a sexual fantasy about Palin as a dominatrix
•If only hate could change false to true
•Ignorance at McClatchy Newspapers
•Faking the news
•University study finds Fox more fair and balanced than ABC/CBS/NBC
•News media credibility at lowest level since polling began
•Living in a Fantasy World, II
•17% of US voters claim news media unbiased