Gotta' love it -- Right Wing Journalism Fail: Breitbart.com Interviews ‘Bono’:
This is just classic. Last night, the geniuses at Breitbart.com were trumpeting a HUGE EXCLUSIVE STORY, in which their ambush specialist Jason Mattera scored an EXCLUSIVE interview with U2 singer Bono.
Only problem with this BOMBSHELL: it wasn’t Bono. Apparently, Mattera encountered a guy with an Irish accent wearing sunglasses who looked sort of like Bono, and conducted an EXCLUSIVE BOMBSHELL INTERVIEW that blew up in his face: ‘DC’s Bad Boy Reporter’ Ambushes Bono Impersonator by Accident:
When the mini-Breits realized that they had been bamboozled, they just 404ed the page, with no retraction or statement of any kind, and marked the video “private” at YouTube to hide the evidence of their hilarious screw-up. But of course, the Internet never forgets, and now the heirs of Andrew are stuck in a moment they can’t get out of.
Charles has the transcript posted as well and the original video which I've posted above. Media Matters has more and I'm not holding my breath for us to get any kind of retraction from Sean Hannity, who was pushing this on his radio show -- Jason Mattera Still Hasn't Found What He's Looking For:
As part of the promotional rollout for his new book, Hollywood Hypocrites, Jason Mattera yesterday unveiled an ambush interview he conducted with U2 lead singer Bono. Or at least, that's who Mattera thought he had ambushed.
The video was posted at conservative websites like Breitbart.com and Glenn Beck's The Blaze, but was later marked "private" on YouTube and pulled from Breitbart.com. Why? As explained by The Blaze,"There is widespread discussion on Twitter that the person Mattera interviewed in the videos may have been a Bono impersonator."
In what is likely the vaguest retraction in recent history, Breitbart.com added an editor's note saying, "Last night, we removed an article about Bono at the request of the videographer who had provided the links to the videos upon which the article had been based."
Whoops.
During an appearance on Sean Hannity's radio program yesterday, which includes a brief snippet of the Mattera interview with "Bono," Hannity and Mattera touted "bad boy reporter" Mattera's impressive ambush interview skills. Asked by Hannity how he managed to get an interview with "Bono," Mattera replied that it was "basic shoeleather journalism." (Hannity promised to run the video on last night's edition of his Fox News program, but said on Twitter this morning that Mattera's appearance was preempted by election coverage and that they would run the video tonight instead.) Read on...
