If Think Progress can debunk the Free Republic talking points, why is ABC so helpless?

This is false balance, presenting the Republican side of the story-- lies, smears, and innuendo-- while not presenting the other side of the story, namely the truth.

Quoting ThinkProgress (to reprise David Lelsz above):

1) Graeme has a scholarship to a private school. The school costs $15K a year, but the family only pays $500 a year.

2) His sister Gemma attends another private school to help her with the brain injuries that occurred due to her accident. The school costs $23,000 a year, but the state pays the entire cost.

3) They bought their “lavish house” sixteen years ago for $55,000 at a time when the neighborhood was less than safe.

4) Last year, the Frost’s made $45,000 combined. Over the past few years they have made no more than $50,000 combined.

5) The state of Maryland has found them eligible to participate in the CHIP program.

Charles, that's an excellent question. I think the answer is that ABC News is a government tool. The story on their evening news ought to be that the Republican Party is trying to crucify a 12-year-old kid and his struggling parents, but you can bet that ABC News will parrot the right-winger line. Either that, or they'll just bury it and give us another update about O.J. Simpson.

The Dixie Chicks.
Undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.
The 9-11 Widows.
And now a 12 year old kid recovering from a car accident.
Republicans are lowlife scumbags. Not just any women and children either, but good, honest all-American women and children.

The Demos want to use children as political pawns to further their agenda, but then cry fowl because people DARE to ask questions and point out a few facts behind this so called poor family who have made a PERSONAL CHOICE NOT to buy their own heath insurance and let the TAXPAYER subsidize their life style by providing it for them…….. THIS family CHOOSE to get into this POLITICAL fight, they are NOT exempt from public scrutiny…

Thank you, Charles. Maybe the worst part of this story is that ABC has uncritically cut-and-pasted falsehoods from those abusive right-wingers. So now the truth is a victim along with the family. The news is supposed to clarify facts, not cover them up and worsen the situation.

Here's how it works:

-- Blogger makes ridiculous "estimates" of the family's income, wealth, and expenses that based on that most impeccable source, Google.
-- ABC reports there is a "firestorm." Readers think: where there's smoke, there's fire. Must be something wrong.
-- Instead of reporting facts that have been checked in order to clarify the real story, ABC REPEATS the falsehoods pulled out of the heinie of some right-wing stalker.
-- Readers think there is a real controversy. Right-wingers get rewarded for their morally disgusting, abusive, possibly criminal harassment of this family.
-- Since it works so well, they will do it again. All while attacking the "liberal press" for not "digging into the story." ABC doesn't seem to mind playing the bad guy in this scenario.

I think this is more disgusting than even the Terry Schiavo disaster or the Clinton impeachment. This is a smaller incident, but the targets are children, a scholarship kid and a kid still recovering from her accident.

However, even more disgusting is the fact that ABC and its colleagues could refuse to amplify this hateful stuff. All it would require would be to report facts objectively -- no liberal bias needed.

I can't find words to say how angry that makes me.

"Cry fowl" -- I guess I needed a laugh, and you gave me one, FidoNY. It's an honor to share a thread with the original dog from that New Yorker cartoon. But, you know, if you chose a different screen name, nobody WOULD know you're a dog.

I can't help thinking the literacy gap between right-wing and liberal/centrist commenters here means something. But I shouldn't judge; it's hard to type with paws.

This family qualified for the program. That has never been at question.

for the vile poster who said "Then I'd do everything possible to destroy their lives with that info.... Then maybe the bunch of socialist patsies will think twice."

It's obvious what you want to punish this family for. Not for benefiting from programs they qualify for.

You want to destroy their lives because they dared to speak up.

The hatred you display is sickening.

I didn't mean you, Magic Dog. You are clearly having no trouble typing wonderfully with your magic paws.

To the poster who said "this so called poor family who have made a PERSONAL CHOICE NOT to buy their own heath insurance and let the TAXPAYER subsidize their life style by providing it for them……"

This family qualified for the benefit. What federal benefits do you qualify for? Did you make a personal choice to use those benefits? Do you take advantage of the mortgage interest deduction? Do you get Social Security benefits? Do you have an FHA mortgage? Do you have a Small Business loan? Do federal subsidies benefit your kids' schools, the industry in which you work, or the community you live in?

Have you made a personal choice to do without those benefits - to which you are entitled?

Why are the Democrats only charging Smokers???

Shouldn't they make EVERYBODY Pay, if they want to steal money to give away.

Plenty of Non-smokers have kids too!

Will they start running ads to encourage people to smoke more... "For the Children"???

Who is the worst Democratic political leader, Pelosi or Reid? Why do they keep giving ammunition to Bush`s Republican Guard? We really do need anothe party.

"The Demos want to use children as political pawns to further their agenda, but then cry fowl because people DARE to ask questions and point out a few facts behind this so called poor family who have made a PERSONAL CHOICE NOT to buy their own heath insurance and let the TAXPAYER subsidize their life style by providing it for them…….. THIS family CHOOSE to get into this POLITICAL fight, they are NOT exempt from public scrutiny…"

Posted by: FidoNY | Oct 8, 2007 11:16:01 PM

As the Traitor-In-Chief likes to say, "Bring It On!", you dug and found nothing. Well... you found something to try and spin, but you've been found out...once again.

If our tax dollars can go to helping a couple of American kids recover from a terrible accident, I'm all for it. Better to be used there than paying another murdering contractor in Iraq.

Pffft Fido... so much for the "Pro-Life" crowd....

Here's an idea if you want to tax smokers...

$1.00 a pack towards a fund to provide lung cancer treatment.

I could get behind that!

Seeing this debate from Canada, it feels like the I'm watching the theatre of the absurd. Its bizarre in itself that there should be any debate over whether an advanced western society should care for its kids.
Here in Canada, we've had a universal, single payer Medicare system for 40 years. Canada was among the last countries in the western world to adopt such a public system.
Today, even the right wingers swear their fealty to Medicare, and they would never even dream of running in an election campaign on a platform of privatizing health care and handing health insurance back to the private health insurance industry.
In Canada, that would be political suicide. It's truly amazing that Americans still don't get it, and it doesn't seem likely that you will in the foreseeable future.

People fear that which they do not know. Amazing how many slam socialism, without knowing anything but what Hannity has told them. If only we had as constant a drumbeat of critique about the real evil - capitalism!

Freeloaders are always using their children as an excuse for not earning their way in life..... You pay for my health care while a use my money to renovate my kitchen.... With the major housing boom we’ve been going thru the past few years I would say old Halsey Frost is either lazy, a very bad carpenter, or is doing a lot of under the table “CASH” work he isn’t reporting...... maybe the IRS needs to take a look at him….

I certainly hope that ABC News will not follow Conservative bloggers down the path of ignoring the truth about the Frost family.

This is nothing but an attempted payback for daring to speak out against the President.

Will ABC go down that road?

I'm old enough to have seen a lot of things, but I didn't think I'd see the day when a national news organization would dump on a 12-year-old kid's father and mother because they couldn't afford to spend half their meager take-home pay for health insurance.

Magic Dog,

Good question.

you must have slept through math class. With 2 kids and making about $50,000 a year, I am reasonably sure that it is impossible to purchase private health care (at upwards of $1,000 a month). Oh, but you say, then the husband or wife should have taken a "regular" job so that they could get health insurance that way! Only 2 problems with that--once the accident happened, now we have our lovely "pre-existing condition" situation (meaning no insurers would touch them). What's that you say? Should have gotten that "regular" job BEFORE the accident? Tsk tsk. Yep--that's what conservatives would like every single American citizen to do, isn't it (except for the already mega-rich): be indentured slaves to the aforementioned mega-rich. No more small business owners. No more being your own boss. No more American dream. Pretty sad.