(They didn't, but let's just say they did and call it close enough)
By Brad Friedman on 1/21/2009, 5:08pm PT  

Via Mark Crispin Miller...

Apparently the propaganda myth that Clinton's people vandalized the White House before leaving it to Bush & Co. (I remember hearing it from Bob Novak on CNN) has become "the truth," at least according to both NBC and ABC News.

From Stephen Schneider:

MCM:

Yesterday, I personally heard both NBC and ABC propagate the long-since debunked story that the outgoing Clintonistas in 2001 removed the "W"s from the White House computers. Whoever said it on ABC (I was in a pizza place at the time, and the sound was kinda low, so I didn't get an ID) appeared to present it as an accepted fact.

NBC's Brian Williams was a bit cagier, saying, "We all remember the story about ... " and then doing nothing to discredit its veracity.

In each case, the context was to laud President Bush's alleged grace and gentility in ceding the office to Obama, as opposed to the rudeness he himself had purportedly weathered.

I didn't hear any such commentary on CBS, but it's entirely possible it got in there somewhere.

Bush: booed by 2 million, buoyed by 2 networks. And they wonder where blogging came from.

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