Conservatives Are Having Fun Fact-Checking Reuters' Marco Rubio Report

Conservatives Are Having Fun Fact-Checking Reuters' Marco Rubio Report

A Reuters report from Thursday is not kind to Marco Rubio and his Vice Presidential aspirations, but it also wasn't completely correct when the newswire published it. The piece frames the Florida Senator as a free-spending fellow with "significant financial problems that could keep him from passing any vetting process as a potential vice presidential choice." Ouch. But then Reuters took a hit of its own after the Daily Caller's Matt K. Lewis fact-checked it, pointing out "at least 7 errors or exaggerations."

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The mistakes themselves are pretty serious, including but not limited to Reuters reporter David Adams falslely reporting that Rubio missed payments on his house and that he voted against the confirmation of Sonya Sotomayor, an act that would've been impossible since, as Lewis points out, Rubio wasn't even in the Senate when Sotomayor had her hearing. Reuters details a laundry list of changes to the original copy at the bottom of the piece but stops short of using the word "correction" for any of them, Reuters' Jim Ledbetter did tweet that "several corrections were issued at 12:54 PM EST."

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Obviously, conservatives are having a blast with this. There's already a hashtag about it and regardless of your feelings about either Rubio or Reuters, some of the tweets are pretty rough, especially with the memory of Reuters' misrepresentation of George Soros's funding Occupy Wall Street still fresh in people's minds. One random example:

Rubio caused the BP oil-spill #reutersfacts

— Robpublican (@robpublican) January 26, 2012

Or if you prefer the absurd:

Marco Rubio started the fight between cats and dogs #ReutersFacts

— ComfortablySmug (@ComfortablySmug) January 26, 2012

A representative of Reuters asked about the handling of the reports' apparent errors wouldn't comment at this time.