A leftwing idiot, that’s who.
Colorado Tea Party Patriots member Jim Holmes told The Daily Caller in a Friday interview that his day has been “surreal” after falsely being linked to the Batman movie massacre in Colorado by an on-air ABC News reporter.
“What kind of idiot makes that kind of statement?” Holmes told TheDC. “Really, seriously, how do we take a journalist seriously when it’s pretty clear they really haven’t done any sort of check on their facts?”
Holmes has the unfortunate coincidence of sharing a similar name with James Holmes, the 24-year-old accused of going on a rampage during a midnight showing of the “Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colorado early Friday morning.
Because of this, ABC News Brian Ross, appearing on “Good Morning America” on Friday, suggested the suspect could be a member of the tea party, citing the fact that “there’s a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colo., page on the Colorado Tea Party site.”
But Ross had the wrong guy: The tea partier he was referring to is this 52-year-old former law enforcement officer. ABC News was forced to apologize online.
Holmes told TheDC that ABC News didn’t call him before going to air and he still hasn’t heard from them or received a direct apology. “No, not a thing,” he said.
Geez, they basically tried to ruin this guy’s life and don’t even apologize? What the hell is wrong with these people? I hope Holmes can pursue some legal recourse here. These people repeatedly keep trying to link tea partiers with violence when there’s never been a single case. The media must pay for such perfidy.
Dan Rather continues to insist that he is right and everyone else in the world is wrong. These people are a bad joke.
Look, this goes beyond simple snark. This is an actionable libel case.
Being a tea party member does not make one a public figure, open to a wider range of attacks. This is worse than the Olympic security guard in Atlanta who was smeared as a “suspected” pipe bomber. He collected big from the local newspaper as well as a number of other news organizations.
ABC News and Brian Ross took a stranger and branded him as a murderer, and unleashed an electronic lynch mob on him. Simply because he had the same name.
If the innocent Jim Holmes suffered from this, he can sue and win.
And none of this “sue the network” crap, sue Ross himself, and the head of the “news”(spit) department by name, etc. Don’t let the network’s insurance policy pay for this.
This is totally unsurprising from a Democrat media that tried to blame the shooting of a congresswoman on Sarah Palin. Anyone who watches the lefty media for information is nuts. They are in business to push an agenda, not tell the truth.
Ross was just having an issue with what he wanted to report and what really happened. His brain malfunctioned and he blurted out a hideous lie. He should be sued.
Sue the fu*k out of ABC! Pricks deserve it.
As part of the settlement (and I hope it’s a good one), Ross should be forced to change his name legally to “Smug Moron.” “Priceless Ass” is also a good suggestion.
It’s the ratchet effect. If they say something then retract it, many people will still believe the original story. Look at the shooter in Arizona – a lot of people still think he was a Tea Party guy.
Sure, people who read conservative blogs don’t, but stop cocooning yourselves.
It’s like Lee Harvey Oswald. Even though the guy was a communist that defected to Russia, to this day, the media has painted him as a right wing extremist inflamed by “hate”
Spike Lee was unavailable or comment.
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“…how do we take a journalist seriously when it’s pretty clear they really haven’t done any sort of check on their facts?” ”
Sorry Mr. Holmes but this shows that you are a bit ignorant too. I’m tired of people who keep saying it was ‘careless’ or ‘they just didn’t check the facts’. No. If that was true, then roughly half the time it would be the Left smeared and half the time it would be the Right.
When they are ‘quick to blame’ someone, it is almost always the Right who gets blamed.
There’s flat-out bias at work here and I wish more people would acknowledge it.
Of all the Jim Holmes’ in Aurora, why did they pick ‘jim holmes tea party member’?
Why didn’t they pick ‘jim holmes, registered democrat’ or ‘union member’?
Pure bias.
Has Brian Ross, of ABC News, been fired yet?
Why not?
in lieu of flowers or other memorials the Obama campaign suggests earmarking gifts for the Re-election of the President.
What makes me curious is how they so quickly pulled up the fact that a member of the local Tea Party had the same name. It’s almost as if they have some type of dossier on the local conservatives, or someone that specifically researches them.
Jim needs to SUE THE PANTS OFF OF ABC. Give them a lesson they won’t soon forget!
How about putting pressure on advertisers. I know they have nothing to do with this moron Ross, but the bottom line is what counts.
He wasn’t fired when he screwed up on the 9/11 anthrax story (maybe Steve Hatfill understands how James Holmes feels), he wasn’t fired when he bullshat outrageously on the “runaway Toyotas” nonsense, and back when he was with Dateline NBC nobody was punished when they put exploding rockets into a GM pickup truck for that “expose”.
So don’t hold your breath.
i smell a lawsuit with a large cash settlement out of court…of course he’ll have to eventually lose his job, but they won’t make him go right away.
Mr. Holmes, ask for $ plus TV time. Say 5 60 second ads per night for the entire month of October.
Oh how I wish I were Jim Holmes or his lawyer. They are both going to do very well indeed out of this. And put new law into the casebooks under the heading “recklessness or malice – injured party not a public figure – diligence in a Web-based environment where defendant is demonstrably well experienced and amply resourced – policy role of exemplary damages to deter other media – bankruptcy of defendant not a consideration in determining award of damages”
lol, Tea Parties are for little girls with invisible friends.
http://www.Full-Anon.tk
lol, TEA Parties are for responsible citizens who pay the rent in this country. OWS is for chumps who believe the government craps money and benefits.
The 52-yr old Mr Holmes of Aurora, CO should be a very rich man by the time this is over. He is a private citizen NOT in the public eye in any way, who was defamed on national televsion by a reporter with a long history of making unjustified accusations including having cost his employer millions of dollars in a libel judgment (Wayne Newton case) and being fired from NBC for false reporting, plus a string of other documented errors. The fact that ABC would hire him as a reporter and have him on the air, given his documented background, is remarkably negligent if not malicious. His statement about Mr. Holmes was made without following any industry norms for fact-checking or corroboration, exhibiting depraved indifference to the truth and the consequences of his reporting. On and on.
If Mr. Holmes has a decent lawyer, he’ll either own ABC or so much of Disney he’ll get a seat on their Board.
It seems Disney own ABC news, from what I looked up. I just sent them a note, for them to FIRE Brian Ross! He is NOT an “INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST”! There was no vetting of his story!!!
DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT PARTY THE REAL JIM HOLMES ( THE KILLER ) BELONGS TO? I’LL BET HE IS A “DEMOCRAT”
Like FOX news doesn’t spew lies and poorly researched statements DAILY. Where’s the outrage there?