Bridge to nowhere

By: Callie McBroom

The Republican Vice-President Nominee, Sarah Palin gave the most important speech of her life at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night. Here, she claimed that she "told Congress 'Thanks, but no thanks' on that bridge to nowhere". This statement has since been challenged. On Thursday, Media Matters for America, a progressive research and information center on US media, reports that the media is ignoring this comment.

I happen to disagree. In fact, I would argue that the exact opposite happened. Immediately after her speech, Brian Williams for NBC suggested that her statement might not be completely true. After further researching to see if this was the case, I was astonished to find that everyone was talking about it, including the newspapers included in the article!


Media Matters is a news source that considers it's mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the media. I find it ironic that it has put out misinformation. Media Matters is trying to point out an inconsistency in Palin's story while it is itself creating an inconsistent story in the process.


Maybe Sarah Palin's positions were exaggerated in her speech. I'm not arguing that they weren't. This, sadly, has become normal for political speeches. People need to evaluate statements like these for themselves, and it is usually helpful to use news sources as a reference. Just make sure the news source knows what they're talking about!