One of the little known sources we have to thank for 5 years of Bushco is Wired Magazine, who perpetuated the "Gore claims to have invented the internet" lie, which fed nicely into the 2000 Republican trashing of Gore.
I'd say WiRED owes us all and apology.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/wired-owes-al-gore-an-apo_b_19980.htmlMedia and political junkies may recall Wired News played a key role in helping create the myth that Gore once awkwardly claimed to have invented the Internet. Indeed, Wired's new Gore profile can't resist revisiting the tale in its headline: "He invented the Internet (sort of)." The inventing-the-Internet charade represented a new low in MSM campaign journalism; a case in which a fabricated story came to dominate the coverage. And make no mistake, it dominated. In researching my new book on Bush and the press, I went back to the 2000 election and counted more than 4,800 television, newspaper and magazine mentions during the campaign of Gore supposedly claiming to have invented the Internet. The fact that it was not true seemed to be of little interest to a press corps often obsessed with tearing Gore down. (Gore was a fake and Bush was authentic, remember?)
The online tale was first hatched by the magazine's Wired News. On March 11 1999, Wired's Declan McCullagh posted a nasty article mocking Gore for his little-noticed comments to CNN's Wolf Blitzer that, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Inelegant wording perhaps, but Wired treated Gore's statement as an outrageously false claim. (McCullagh later bragged, "I was the first reporter to question the vice president's improvident boast.") To give the story some oomph, Wired downplayed the real role Gore played legislatively in helping shepherd the Internet's commercial applications to life (even Newt Gingrich vouched for that), did not call the Gore campaign for additional comment or explanation, but did include a quote from conservative flak who ridiculed the VP. In fact, the GOP partisan was the only person apparently contacted by Wired for its Gore story.
The caustic Wired story was quickly picked up by Republicans who, busy planting the Gore-is-a-liar narrative in the press, began the mantra that Gore claimed to have "invented" the Internet. He never did. Nonetheless, pundits on the right (Bill Kristol) and left (Mark Shields) unloaded on Gore, as journalists ran with with the much more pleasing "invented" phrase. Even in its follow-up Gore/internet article, Wired, which knew Gore never claimed to have "invented" anything, effortlessly adopted the GOP spin, reporting in the very first paragraph that Gore "claimed to have invented the Internet." For that, Wired announced in 1999, the VP was "spewing half-witted comments."
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