MSM Fact-Checking? What MSM Fact-checking?

So the Los Angeles Times is the latest 'news' source to admit that their reporters apprently missed the class in journalism school about research and checking sources. According to Breitbart.com, a story invented as an April Fool's joke ended up on the LA Times front page. However, the funniest part came a little later in ths story, when a red-faced editor admitted:

The reporter saw it on the Internet and had talked with the governor in the past, so she was familiar enough with the way he talks and writes that she thought it sounded authentic, and she didn't check, which she should have," Times Deputy Metro Editor David Lauter told the Casper Star Tribune.

What?! She 'saw it on the Internet'? And ;'she had talked with the governor in the past' so she 'was familiar enough with the way he talks and writes...' Heh. That sounds like unmitigated hubris to me. I have met and talked with a number of people in high positions, but a brief conversation does not an expert make me regarding their speech and writing styles. In addition, most reporters' interviews wwith politicians are extremely limited and I doubt that a minor LA reporter would be on close and personal terms with a governor- not even a fellow Democrat! And to claim that based on a brief acquaintance that she 'knew how he talked and wrote' is the height of arrogance. This is the kind of attitude that makes people distrust the media- their elitism and their know-it-all behavior. They are only ashamed because in this case, they were caught red-handed and the story was undoubtedly fake. They couldn't even trot out their 'fake-but-true' mantra in this case!

Remind me again about mainstream media 'professionalism'? I don't know any serious blogger who would have been caught that way. What were those qualifications that so-called 'professional journalists' are supposed to possess that bloggers don't again? *snicker*

Hat tip to Matt Drudge.