Fox News Watchdog

In a February 28 piece headlined, “Obama Ready to Move Forward on Healthcare Reform,” the Washington Post‘s Anne Kornblut closed on a rather odd note:

Republicans have expressed growing confidence heading into the midterm elections, with healthcare as a potential campaign tool. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele took the argument a step further, saying after the Thursday summit that it had been “a death panel for Obama-care.”

“If that wasn’t enough, when you come out of this thing and you’re looking at the reconciliation fight that may loom ahead of us, it certainly will have represented a death panel for the Democrats this fall,” Steele said on CNN.

Death panels became part of the debate last summer, after prominent Republicans, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, claimed the government would set them up to decide who could live or die.

Is the assumption here that everyone knows that there were never any death panels in any healthcare bill? When the leader of a major party is still making references to them, it deserves some sort of corrective from a journalist.  The Post reminds readers where the lie came from–but not that it’s a lie.

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