-By Warner Todd Huston
Last week a story appeared at The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire blog that made an unsupported claim that President Obama packed 18,000 people into a Wisconsin arena that only sports 5,000 seats. At the time it was posted, The Journal did not offer a source for the 18,000 attendee count, but today there has been an addition updating that source.
Now, according to Washington Wire, that source has been identified as Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.
The Wall Street Journal wasn’t the only news outlet that blindly regurgitated the 18,000 attendee claim. Politico and the Associated Press both used the seemingly impossible number.
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Wall Street Journal ‘Corrects’ Source on Obama Event Attendance”
Tonight I am blogging from an evening with the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund sponsored by the 
I have already purchased and had personalized by copy of Mr. Fund’s excellent book “Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy,” and was gratified that this excellent writer chronicalling today’s spiral remembered me from our meeting earlier in the year. No, really. He did. Excellent memory that one.
Remember during Bush’s run for the White House in 2000 when it was announced that Dick Cheney was his choice for vice president and the media meme became that Cheney added “gravitas” to the ticket? This is a small example of manufactured news. It wasn’t the fact that Cheney added much to the ticket, but that the media universally adopted a single word to describe the effect that Cheney had on the race. This is an example of the herd mentality in the Old Media. Sometimes, like with the choice of “gravitas” in 2000, that herd mentality is somewhat innocuous. But, other times it becomes an impediment to truth.