Liberal Site Think Progress Caught With Unethical Pants Down

A little boy named Jack, adopted from Russia several years ago as a toddler, celebrated Father’s Day this year with his family in Minnesota with Rep. Michele Bachmann. Jack is now 8. (Photo: AP/Getty)

Think Progress, the media wing of the leftists Center for American Progress, has been caught with their unethical pants down, publishing a fictitious story that claimed Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann proposed “Americanization” labor camps for Central American children illegally crossing over the southern border.

“I’m calling on all of us, Obama and Congress and everyone, to chip in and build special new facilities…‘Americanization facilities,’ if you will,” Think Progress erroneously quoted Bachmann as saying. The website has since corrected its embarrassment, but for failing to vet a bogus story their reputation will long be scarred.

Perhaps the most ridiculous and unbelievable aspect to this story is the depiction of Bachmann as a cold and calculating individual respecting children. The congresswoman is a foster mother to 23 foster children, and her record on child protective services, is unquestionably one of compassion.

“And we’d send these kids to these facilities, in Arizona and Texas and wherever else. And we’d get private sector business leaders to locate to those facilities and give these children low-risk jobs to do. And they’d learn about the American way of life, earn their keep, and everyone wins in the end,” Think Progress went on to quote Bachmann as saying.

Think Progress is owned by the leftist think-tank, the Center for American Progress, and is run by several individuals who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.

The bogus Think Progress story was further pushed in a post published on the website KCTV 7, which claims to be a news outlet based out of Kansas City. However, KCTV 7, too, publishes fake news. In fact, in the Kansas City area, channel 7 is not even a valid channel.

The KCTV 7 article claimed that Bachmann proposed putting the children in the work camps during an interview with Minnesota’s Twin Cities News talk radio host Jason Lewis. But a simple attempt to follow the link directed us to the homepage on Twin Cities News site, and there was no article or radio interview with Bachmann to be found.

Interestingly, it was another liberal website, the Raw Story, that first pointed out the entire hoax after Think Progress published it on Sunday. Still, the Raw Story coverage was just as shameful as the original story, one could argue, as the headline read “Crazy racist Bachmann story so believable liberal websites fall for parody.”

“The news site KCTV7 News is a parody. Rep. Bachmann (R-MN) never made the statement. We sincerely regret the error,” the apology and correction statement from Think Progress reads.

The Daily Kos, another liberal website popular with the left, also took the story and ran with it before ever bothering to confirm whether the story was accurate.