The Trib Editorial Board Just Can't Get It Right

From today's Midweek Briefing:

Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid reminds that there was another interesting guest at President Obama's first state dinner on Nov. 24. Robert W. Creamer, a friend of White House adviser David Axelrod, was released from federal prison in 2006 after serving a five-month sentence for financial crimes. The company one keeps...

First off, the Tribune-Review is supposed to be a "news" organization. That means they're supposed to get their facts straight - the man's name is Robert B. Creamer. Granted, this is a teeny, tiny error. But if a "news" organization can't get the easy ones right, how can we trust it with the complicated ones?

And how easy would it have been to, you know, check the name? This easy. It's from AIM:

The media furor over the White House state dinner crashers ignores the convicted felon who was invited to attend with the approval of Obama's inner circle. The ex-convict, Robert B. Creamer, is a friend of White House adviser David Axelrod and the husband of Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois. [emphasis added.]

See? How sloppy must a "news" operation be if they can't even quote their own source without making a rookie error?

But let's fill in some of the blanks. What was Creamer sent to prison for? From the Chicago Sun-Times:

The husband of U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) will spend five months in prison for committing bank fraud as part of his efforts to keep afloat a nonprofit group that he ran.

U.S. Senior District Judge James Moran handed down the punishment on Wednesday to Robert Creamer, who also will serve 11 months under house arrest.

The sentence fell far short of the three-year prison term that prosecutors were seeking for Creamer, who pleaded guilty last year to writing a series of bad checks worth millions of dollars to numerous banks to generate cash -- a scheme known as check-kiting.

In granting a sentence below the recommended federal guidelines, Moran said Creamer's motivation wasn't to profit off the money but to keep his consumer advocacy group, Illinois Public Action, alive.

And this from the USAToday:

The husband of an Illinois congresswoman pleaded guilty Wednesday to tax violations and bank fraud for writing rubber checks and failing to collect withholding tax from an employee.

And:

Creamer, 58, a prominent Chicago political consultant, was accused of swindling nine financial institutions of at least $2.3 million while he ran a public interest group in the 1990s.

Wow. Way back then, huh? So a decade ago he knowingly bounced a healthy pile of checks (which is very very stupid and very very illegal) and then went to jail for it.

This is what Scaife's editorial board meant by "financial crimes."

I am guessing they wanted you to assume Creamer was responsible for the collapse of the economy - but that's just a guess.

By the way, Accuracy In Media was one of the big pushers of the "Vince Foster was murdered" myth. One of the sources of that myth was Christopher Ruddy, writing for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. A paper owned by Richard Mellon Scaife. Ruddy's now at Newsmax

Oh, the company one keeps...